Last Stand in Lychford

by Paul Cornell

  Autumn took his hand. “She was brilliant at the end. She never stopped being amazing.”

  “I had . . . backed off a little. Let her be. The number of times I saw her and she clearly didn’t know who I was. It’s like I lost the woman I . . . I was friends with, I suppose. It never came to more than that. I lost her months ago. And yet I just don’t know, I feel a gap. I want a conversation I will never now be able to have.”

  “Yeah.”

  They were both silent together for a while. When he spoke again, it was with fear in his voice. “These terrible things, they defy rationality. They seem outside of science.”

  “They’re not. I won’t let myself think they are.”

  “I knew Judith worked for you, so I suppose I suspected, this shop being what it is, that you’d know . . . anyway, that’s why I decided we should have this conversation, and why I should bring this to you.” He reached into the bag he’d brought with him and pulled out a round shape, about the size of a cricket ball, wrapped in newspaper and string. Autumn’s extra senses felt something uneasy about the bundle, something negative, but it was such a small feeling. It was like something was waiting to be hatched, like inside the bundle was some sort of . . . egg? “It seems while I was away this arrived by post at the restaurant. I opened it up, but . . . well, I don’t know what this is.”

  Autumn still felt profoundly odd making a magical sign of protection openly in front of someone. Sunil just raised an eyebrow at it, interested. She went and got some of the holy water Lizzie had given her a supply of, and her own protective unguent (mostly Aldi “light in colour” olive oil) and drew a circle on the table around the package. Then she untied the package and opened it up. It was highly unlikely Judith would have sent something dangerous to someone she cared about, but as Sunil had said, toward the end she’d done some very random shit.

  On the paper lay something that should have been in a butcher’s shop. Or no . . . more like an archaeological dig. It was an organ of some kind, though none that Autumn recognised. It was brown and ancient, parched of the liquids that had stained it. But it wasn’t mummified or preserved. It had that egg sensation about it, that here was something that still contained potential.

  “Is it a heart?” asked Sunil.

  “Romantic gesture,” said Autumn, and immediately regretted it.

  But Sunil smiled sadly. “There was no note. Perhaps this is something sent from her dementia, something taken from an animal. A sacrifice? Something to protect me? Or perhaps there’s no meaning to it.”

  Autumn told him she’d look into it. Sunil seemed satisfied, took her hand again, looked awkward, again with that feeling of incompletion, of not knowing. Finally, he headed out. Autumn stretched, sighed, picked up her phone and glanced at it. And let out a scream.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Lizzie looked around to see Autumn skidding to a halt. “We’re going to need you to start answering your phone,” she said, and immediately regretted it.

  “It was something important. What, did you think I was with Luke?”

  Lizzie was incredibly aware that they had an audience. “Tabling that,” she said. “And sorry. This is the problem we’re facing.”

  Thankfully, Autumn nodded and listened. “Why were you able to text me?” was the first thing she asked.

  “Sorry?” said Lizzie.

  “Radio stations aren’t getting in, and neither is the radio for the phones. It’s not as if we’ve got a mobile phone tower nearby, and even if we did, it would need to communicate with other towers. So that’s got to be deliberate. Whatever this is is letting us talk to each other, but not to the world.”

  Together with a number of, now highly engaged, locals, they headed to check out the rest of what seemed to be a circular wall. They first went to the Folly, the pub at the end of the road going out of town to the north. This was the route that went over the bridge on the river that had given the town its name. Developing as a market town dependent on the wool trade, roads roughly at the compass points had evolved to bring sheep flocks in from outlying farms, and that was the way it had stayed. Now each one of the roads, according to reports, were bisected by the invisible wall. In this particular case it was marked by a line of stones that Erica, the landlady of the Folly, had placed there. She and her family had heard about what was going on from a sobbing friend on the eastern side of town and had rushed out into the road to halt approaching vehicles. Luckily, this road was the one with the least traffic. So this was the only access point where the arrival of the wall hadn’t resulted in damage either to people or vehicles. Jake Beresford had so far been the only fatality. On the other side of the invisible wall here at the bridge there was already a queue of vehicles, with people at the back continually coming forward and having to test the wall for themselves, despite being yelled at by Erica’s two burly sons.

  “Maybe I should have put the cones here,” said Shaun.

  “I think that’s right about them killing someone deliberately,” said Autumn. “Them being whichever power set this up. They had to throw this whole wall . . . I guess it goes all the way up?”

  “It seems to,” said Lizzie. “One of the senior school kids sent up a drone and it exploded.”

  “They had to put it all up at once, so they targeted one person, waited until he was in the way and left what happened on the other roads to chance. Maybe Jake was a sacrifice to help power this thing.”

  “The outside world,” said Lizzie, “will now be aware of what’s going on. And they will be very puzzled.”

  “So the enemy really don’t care if they’re seen doing this. It’s all out in the open now. An attack on the whole of reality. Like Maitland Picton’s mission was meant to be.”

  “Which helps us not at all. Even if the army shows up. We can’t even get a message out. Not until they’re within shouting distance, anyway. Because at least sound is getting through.”

  “Judith left something that might be useful. But she didn’t leave it with us.”

  Lizzie was surprised to hear about Judith’s strange parcel. “It can’t be relevant. If Judith had been aware this was going to happen she’d have said something.”

  “True. But we were all aware of the general fairy-political situation, her included. She’d have assumed we were going to be dealing with the rebel fairies at some point. I just don’t know why she would have kept the heart or whatever it is from us. I already tried it on the pieces of Finn, by the way, I took just a moment to do that before I came over—” Her tone had already become defensive.

  “Right. I’d have done that too.”

  “—and like you, I assumed that somehow Judith knew the future. But rubbing it on the pieces, squeezing it over them. . . . No. I do not think she divined that Finn was going to explode and might need healing.”

  Shaun came back over. “I’m going to get anyone stuck on this side to leave their vehicles and head back into town. I’ve sent a couple of the burlier lads to head out to the other compass point roads and do the same. I think the best thing I can do is keep checking up on those compass points. Okay with you two?”

  Lizzie looked to Autumn, saw her nod absently, still annoyed. Those new to Lychford would find a welcome in the town’s three cash-strapped coffee houses. For those businesses there was definitely a silver lining. “Yes,” she said.

  “You two are going to sort this out, aren’t you?” said Shaun. “Quickly? Because—”

  “Thank you, Shaun,” said Lizzie, actually finding it in herself to dismiss a police officer.

  Shaun paused for a moment, then decided to let himself be dismissed. But the look on his face said his urgent question wasn’t going to go away.

  “So,” said Autumn, “no pressure.”

  * * *

  Zoya was having a perplexing morning working in the shop, listening while trying not to to the increasingly bizarre and scared stories the locals were telling each other. It seemed that nobody had left for work this morning,
that they all thought there was some sort of wall stopping them from getting out of Lychford. Was there not a podcast documentary series to be made about this? The town that lost its marbles. “Logan,” she said to the boy who was on the tills with her, “why do people here believe all this mime artiste bullshit?”

  He stared at her. “Oh my God. Weren’t you here when it rained? My nan wasn’t here, either, but when she came back there was still a bit of the water around and she must have inhaled it or whatever and now she can feel it, too, just like the rest of us can.”

  Zoya made a heroic effort and contained her exasperation. “This feeling . . . is it like perhaps someone nice is looking down on the town from the north and he wants everything to be well and there’s maybe another bit of you, a good bit, that needs to learn, out there somewhere? I feel that, a little, sometimes. This is me being charitable. This is a slight poetic moment. This is the closest I can get to why everyone here is now bugfuck crazy in the head.”

  Logan stared at her. “No, it’s not like that at all.”

  “Ah well. I thought it was worth a try.”

  Logan’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out to look at it. He became immediately agitated. “The boss says if we think there’s any danger, we should pull down the shutters and close up. Are you feeling any danger?”

  “No.”

  “I am a bit. Maybe not enough? A bit, though.”

  Zoya felt that perhaps engagement would stop him from jittering back and forth between the tills. “Tell me more about this feeling of yours. How everyone feels.”

  * * *

  Autumn and Lizzie had headed back to Autumn’s shop, aware of townsfolk heading home all around them. “So what’s the enemy’s next move?” Autumn asked, unlocking the door of her business. God, they’d been used to the town not knowing or caring about what they did. She’d been used to the pressure of saving the universe, but everyone down the pub knowing about it? That made everything gibberingly more enormous. And Lizzie continuing to be off with her was exactly what she didn’t need right now.

  “Finn said they were ‘coming,’ so, having cut us off, that may be the next thing. We should put everyone on alert.” As they went inside, Lizzie showed Autumn a list of local resources on her phone, from the care workers at the retirement home to the library staff.

  “I don’t know how much help local anything is going to be,” said Autumn. “They’re already starting to panic.”

  “But we have to warn people what to expect.”

  “Yes. Of course. I’m just saying—”

  “Finn thought you could do something about whatever this is. Those were his last words, that I should go and get you.”

  “Thanks for that.” Autumn headed in the direction of the kettle. She’d decided the only way to tackle Lizzie about something that was getting to her was, as always, head on. “Okay, there’s time for this now. We need to be on the same page. What’s getting to you? Is it something about Luke?” She looked over her shoulder to see that Lizzie had immediately folded her arms. Which was a sure sign something was about to blow. “We shouldn’t have shagged, is that it?”

  The expression on Lizzie’s face did not become in any way more peaceful.

  * * *

  Logan had been describing his personal odyssey with his new senses, at some length. Which seemed at least to be calming him down. A little. “It isn’t what you said about someone nice looking down on us. It’s about terrible things lurking around everywhere. And the boss says now they’ve walled us all in. With them inside, too, probably. Lurking.”

  “I think your version is what isn’t true. This is fertiliser-based weirdness everyone is deluded from.”

  “Deluded? You’re the one who’s weird.”

  “Why do you say this?”

  “Because ours is all of us, and yours is just you.”

  “Ah. Now that’s more what I’m used to.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Zoya was grateful at that moment for the bell signifying the arrival of a customer. It was an old lady, who immediately started yelling at them. “We’ve been told to go to our homes! By the police! It’s happening!” And then she ran out again.

  Logan, galvanised, went to the door, fumbled with the latches, seemed to realise he was too panicked to handle anything so fiddly, and with a little cry, fled off through the shop, presumably aiming for the back door. Which made no sense. Because that old lady had been fine.

  Zoya wouldn’t have said she was calm, exactly, in the face of all this, but she wasn’t terrified either. She had, in her life, seen some stuff. “Decadent,” she muttered to herself. She would lock up and take what she was now pretty sure was an official day off with pay, the first task of which would be to head over to the school to make sure Jas wasn’t in the way of any of this insanity.

  She went to the door. She realised that the marketplace outside was weirdly silent. She opened the door and looked out. Yup. Deserted. Everyone was taking this order pretty damn seriously. But then, that one police officer who was sometimes in the town was as cuckoo as all the rest. She closed the door again, drew the bolts, and found the latches for the shutters that had so defeated Logan.

  * * *

  Lizzie was about to let out all her tension by finally bellowing . . . she didn’t know what she was going to bellow but her cheeks were flushed and she was certainly deeply upset about something and here it was, the big something she’d say that would let the row start to happen and then maybe she’d find out why—

  But then something shot past her cheek and was suddenly in the wall beside Autumn.

  “Get down!” Autumn shouted, throwing herself to the floor.

  Lizzie tried to do the same. But as she did so, there was a sudden, impossible pain in her shoulder and the impact of it spun her around. She fell, tripping over her feet. As she hit the ground the pain in her shoulder exploded.

  It was more pain than she had ever felt before. She had a moment to realise that.

  And then she was lost.

  2

  AUTUMN LAY ON THE FLOOR, panting. She looked to where the . . . arrow, yes it was an arrow, or at least it was a transparent shaft with blue liquid inside . . . was embedded in the wall. It glowed in her extra senses, with the malice of a vicious snake. Another, exactly the same, but without its contents, was in Lizzie’s shoulder, where she was lying on the ground, completely still. From where Autumn was, she couldn’t even see if she was breathing. Her face now had a tinge of blue to it. Poison arrows. Shit.

  She looked to the windows and found no holes, certainly none in the direction the arrows had come from. So these bloody things had come straight through the wall. She wasn’t safe wherever she was. But presumably they still needed a line of sight to locate her, or—

  Two more arrows shot close over her head and hit the wall beside the first.

  Right. They were firing blind. And there were at least two archers. She reached out a toe toward the inner door and kicked at it, so hard it hit the frame and quickly rebounded back to close itself. A flurry of arrows went through the wall and the door and, she could hear, embedded themselves somewhere in her work room. Autumn stayed put. A few moments later, there were more distant thuds. They’d heard the sound, thought she’d gone in there, and moved round the building to fire blind into that space with no windows.

  They obviously could decide which surfaces their arrows went through. Bloody hell.

  She had a few moments now. What could she do with them?

  She slid over to Lizzie and found that yes, she was breathing, just about. Regularly too. This had always been Autumn’s nightmare: having to get medical attention for a supernatural problem.

  So, save the vicar, save the world. In that order, probably. But first Autumn had to save herself. What would Judith have done? Complain. Yes, thank you, brain, but after that? All of Autumn’s major resources were in her work room. She needed to put up some sort of protection around the shop. Something str
ong. That would need the calling down of power. That was going to require sacrifice.

  Okay, who was the most beloved and powerful entity that Autumn could think of right now? Oh. Oh shit, this felt like blasphemy. Lizzie might well see it as that, though she distantly remembered Lizzie saying something about how she didn’t believe in blasphemy. Which made no sense. Well, anyway, Lizzie wasn’t conscious right now. So . . .

  “Judith, I call on you as an intercessional presence,” Autumn whispered, putting every ounce of emotion she had into the words. And that was plenty. All she had to do was look at Lizzie and it was plenty. “I call on you as a god made of my need, my desperate need. Please Judith, mother to us all, see us and help us today and focus this sacrifice.” And as she said the words, she found gestures, born of her research and her emotion, that let her shape what she was willing into being out there into something that was in here. The shape of the sounds, the shape of her hands, the emotional content of the phrases, it was all working, she could feel it was, to make her will real in the world. But now she had to commit. Now she had to find something to give to her higher purpose, to this higher power she’d conjured up from the depths of her imagination, which were also the depths of reality.

  What could she give that Judith would ever approve of? Not blood. Too messy. Too vital to continuing life, and Judith had always been about that. It couldn’t be anything dark either. Judith had always been a hedge witch, the local wise woman. She’d used the power of the dark once, in that she’d pursued selfish and aggressive ends, and she’d regretted it enormously. The goal here was fierce maternal protection. Of which Autumn didn’t have much personal experience. The sacrifice had to be something that had fondness to it.