Arcadia

by James Treadwell

  “Long as you behave,” adds horse-face, giving Rory’s neck a little tug: little, but enough to make his throat burn.

  The next thing that happens is Lino comes haring down the road and around the corner, where he stops at once, taking in the scene, his enormous eyes round as saucers. He shouts something to Silvia, who answers.

  “Sounds like Italian,” Sal says. “Italiano?”

  Ignoring her, Silvia exchanges something with Lino again. He trots back out of sight.

  “He says your woman is not hurt,” Silvia says to Sal, in her proper voice. “I tell my friend to make sure it stays the same. There is no need for this.”

  Sal stares at her in surprise.

  “Well well well,” says sunglasses woman. “This is a clever one.”

  “Be gentle with the boy,” Silvia says. “He doesn’t speak English. He is frightened.”

  Got it, Rory thinks. It’s a weird feeling. He’s being half throttled and Silvia’s got her hands tied behind her back, but he can tell somehow that she’s in control of the situation.

  “Easy, Jody,” Sal says to horse-face. “No need to strangle the kid. We can sort this out.”

  “Where’s Soph?” says the one with the sunglasses.

  “They’re bringing her,” says the tough one.

  Lino returns, walking this time, soon followed by Per. Everyone goes very still when Per comes into view. He’s holding his staff in one hand, as always, but with the other he’s got a tall scrawny woman by the scruff of the neck and he’s pushing her along like another of his sacks. They’ve gagged her with a band of red cloth, a long sock maybe, tied through her mouth and around the back of her head.

  Sunglasses woman wrenches Silvia’s arms. “Tell them to get that out of her mouth right away,” she says in her ear. “And don’t pretend you don’t understand me.”

  “It’s all right,” Sal says. She raises her voice. “Everyone’s a little tense. Let’s calm it down.” She turns to Silvia. “Can you ask them to take that gag off, please? Soph’s a bit sweary but she doesn’t bite.”

  “And you let go of the boy,” Silvia says.

  Sunglasses woman’s about to say something angry but Sal stops her. “OK,” she says. “Jody?”

  With obvious reluctance, Jody removes her arm from Rory’s throat. He rubs his neck, gulping air. Silvia says something to Lino, who unties the tall woman’s mouth.

  “Fucking arseholes,” she says, as soon as she can speak. She’s got an accent that’s not from England: it comes out as aahhsholes. She has a narrow face, young but grown-up, pocked all around her cheeks and mouth with pimple scars. Her hair’s longer and straighter than Silvia’s and almost as black. She rubs her chin. “They were waiting for me at the crossroads.” She says waiting like whiting. Per’s holding her at arm’s length, and even though she’s very tall, taller even than Kate, she looks like a rag puppet in front of him.

  “Let her go,” the tough woman says to Per. She’s still mounted and still gripping the cricket bat.

  “Careful, Sal,” shouts the woman called Soph. The two groups are separated by maybe twenty strides of road, littered with the gang’s bags. “Fuckers knew I was coming. Must’ve seen me. This lot know what they’re doing.”

  Lino calls a question. Before Silvia can answer sunglasses woman has twisted her arms again. “That’s enough of that,” she says. “They could be planning something. Only English now, all right?”

  “Hold the woman.” Silvia’s answering Lino, in English, as she’s been told. “If there is trouble, break her neck.”

  “Bitch,” spits horse-face, and grabs Rory’s shoulders. There’s a lot of angry stirring, but Sal moves quickly, raising her arms and her voice together. “Everyone listen,” she says. “Everyone!” She moves to calm her horse, then swings herself up onto its saddle and rides into the space in the middle of the standoff. “No one’s going to get hurt. All right?” She glares at the rest of her army, and then at Lino and Per. “Do you understand me? No one gets hurt? Do they understand that much?”

  “Yes,” Silvia says.

  “Good. Now. Let’s talk. Just talk, OK? Let’s find out what you want.”

  “To go on this road,” Silvia says. “East. Left alone. We have food and everything we need.”

  “If they’re so keen to commit suicide,” the tough one says, “might as well let them go.”

  “No way, Ace,” says the one with the sunglasses. “The Professor’s going to want to talk to them.”

  “I don’t like the idea of taking them to Dolphin,” Jody says. “We could blindfold the men and march them to the Mount, like Haze said.”

  “It’s on their way,” sunglasses woman—presumably Haze—agrees. “Let’s do that. Grab that kid.”

  “No,” Sal says loudly. “I told you, we’re just talking.”

  Haze mutters something Rory can’t hear, though it doesn’t sound complimentary.

  “The giant’s the one to watch,” Soph shouts. “Benson wouldn’t go near him. Bolted when he looked at him. I don’t like that club of his either.”

  “Your friend is wise,” Silvia says. “Per is not a man to make angry.”

  “You should try me,” Ace says.

  “Stop it,” Sal says.

  “Let us go.” Silvia’s still addressing only Sal, staying very calm. “Untie my hands, we will pick up our things, give you back your friend, go on to the east. We find what we are looking for and you will not see the four of us again.”

  “Well,” Ace says, “that last bit’s certainly right.”

  “What is it you’re looking for?” Sal says.

  “This I can’t tell you.”

  “The Valley?”

  “The room where your wishes come true,” Ace says sarcastically.

  “The well whose water cures every illness of body or soul,” Haze says, as if she’s reciting something.

  “I have never heard this name, the Valley,” Silvia says with a straight face. Rory gapes for a moment before remembering he’s not supposed to understand anything.

  “It’s a long day’s walk due east,” Sal says. “That’s what you said you were planning, isn’t it? If that’s where you think you’re going, the Valley’s where you’ll end up. You’re not the only ones who’ve gone looking in there.”

  “But we are the only ones who will find what we look for,” Silvia says. Ace snorts a snort worthy of Per.

  “They came in a boat, Ace,” says Haze. “Think about it. Two men.”

  “Exactly,” says Jody.

  “This is serious shit,” Soph says, apparently agreeing with the other two. “Listen, Sal. They did something to the old coot’s dog. His dog, understand? Knocked it out cold. Good as killed it.”

  For some reason this makes a huge impression on the other women. Haze looks up at Sal.

  “Christ,” she says. “We’ve got to bring them with us.” Jody and Ace are both muttering in agreement. “Might be our chance to finish off the Pack.”

  “All right,” Sal says. She’s speaking to Silvia. Rory has the feeling the two of them are eyeing each other up, conducting a kind of silent battle separate from all the others. “You’ve said what you want, here’s what we want. We want you to come with us.”

  “No,” Silvia says.

  “You’re going east, we’ll take you east.”

  “Not Dolphin, Sal,” says Jody, warning.

  Sal ignores her. “It’s on your way. You’ll stay with us one night, that’s all. We can talk properly. There are things we need to ask you. Then you can go, and I promise no one will interfere after that.”

  “No,” Silvia says again. “We go alone.”

  Sal frowns, looks at her hands. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Like I said, there are things we need to talk about.”

  “Get hold of the kid, Jody,” Haze says quickly, and Jody does. “Don’t!” Sal says, but she’s not really a general. She may be keeping her head better than the rest of her army but she’s not giving orders
. Rory gasps as an arm squeezes his windpipe again.

  It’s hard to make sense of what happens next. For one thing he can’t see very well with Jody twisting his head around and most of his attention focused on trying to breathe, and for another thing it’s all over incredibly quickly, as collapses are. It’s actually his gasp that sets it all off. Silvia twists around to see what they’re doing to him, exerting herself for the first time, pulling away from Haze, who’s not expecting it. Haze grabs at her with a “No you don’t,” and yanks her bound wrists too roughly, which makes Silvia yelp with pain. Rory doesn’t exactly see what happens with Per but he hears the beginning of an angry growl and then gets a confused glimpse of Per and Soph tumbling together. It looks like she’s kicked back with the heel of her riding boots and smacked him in the shins, making him let go of her collar. All at once everyone’s shouting. Soph’s rolling forward and running towards them and meanwhile Ace has spurred her horse and is charging the other way, towards Per, brandishing the cricket bat. Sal’s yelling something no one’s listening to. Rory’s being pulled backwards while Jody tries to catch the reins of her panicky horse with her other hand. “Give me the knife!” Haze screams, and then, even louder, not screaming but commanding, Silvia shouts “Per, don’t!” in a tone which sounds like it could stop tides and silence the wind, but Per does.

  What he does, exactly, Rory doesn’t see. He hears it instead. He hears a ferocious bellow in a language that isn’t English or Italian or Danish, a language whose sounds don’t come from anywhere in the human world. Then he hears a rush of wind, though there’s no wind to go with it, and the sound’s too hollow somehow, too parched and empty to be anything to do with the weather. Then he hears a lot of women and horses screaming. Jody drops him. His knees and palms sting as he falls but he looks up in time to see Ace’s horse rear up and twist inside a miniature typhoon of evanescent flame. It’s not the way horses are supposed to rear up. No animal’s body is supposed to move like that: it’s like it’s being electrocuted, like it’s trying to find a way out of its own skin. “Per!” Silvia shouts again, but he can’t hear her. His eyes aren’t his eyes anymore, they’re something else, discs of brass. He’s clutching the staff and holding it thrust out towards the tormented horse. Ace slides out of her saddle but her foot’s tangled in the stirrup somehow and instead of falling she tips backward, screaming, and flips upside down. Her head hits the road with a crack so horrible it cuts through all the shouting and makes Rory seize up and double over and squeeze his eyes closed. The wind that isn’t wind is roaring now: it sounds like voices, hundreds of them, each one a dead whisper but together an unbearable chorus. It forces Rory’s eyes open again in time for him to see the maddened horse leap straight into the hedge, pulling Ace behind it like a sack. She’s limp and leaking blood from her head. The horse’s hind legs thump and clatter her as it scrambles for a footing in the thick bramble, plunging through thorns as if whatever’s torturing it is ten times worse, heedless of the deadweight it’s dragging against stones and roots and barbs. It tramples and claws its way over the hedge and vanishes from sight, galloping wildly across the abandoned field. There’s more galloping, hooves beating on the road. Rory turns himself round to see the other riders disappearing, two of them doubled up on one of the horses. Somehow they must have got themselves mounted and away. Silvia’s on her knees in the road, her hands still pinned behind her back, but all she cares about is Per. “Lino!” she screams, and then something in Italian. Lino’s staring at Per in horror, but Silvia’s order breaks his trance. He springs up and claps his hand in front of Per’s face, four times, five times, yelling.

  The staff drops from Per’s hands. Something invisible, something that was never really there at all, whirls itself tight like a typhoon and vanishes up into the sky. Per clutches his face and staggers. “Don’t,” Silvia says again, her shout suddenly exhausted, despairing.

  There’s a little smear of very dark red on the road where Ace’s head hit it. It’s puddling, slowly; trickling into a crack in the wasted tarmac. Nothing else is moving. In the distance, the crackle of hoofbeats fades swiftly away.

  Per takes his hands away from his face. He stares at the staff by his feet. Hidden by the shaggy mass of his beard and hair, his expression is unreadable. He picks up the staff, steps towards one of the sacks, and nudges it with his toe.

  “OK,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  16

  No one wants to talk. Well, perhaps Lino does, but he’s not going to get anywhere. He and Per don’t share enough English to converse, and anyway there’s clearly nothing to be said to Per at the moment in any language. Silvia’s expression is black and brooding. She looks like she might kill anyone who attempted to chat with her. And Rory’s hanging behind the rest of them, staring at his aching feet as he walks, with just as little interest in exchanging a word with anyone. He’s waiting for all of this to turn out to be a weird mistake. He’s waiting for someone boring and normal to appear round the corner and say All right, Rory, time for bed now, and take him off to give him food and then tuck him in.

  While he waits, he walks, and walks.

  They come to a place where the tangle pressing in on the road has been hacked away, leaving a rough muddy rectangle of spongy grass where two ancient stones are standing upright, each about as tall as Rory. Someone’s made necklaces or belts of feathers, white and grey and black, and hung one around each of them. There are words painted sideways on the stones, crude letters which might once have been white. Lino stops and bends his head over, trying to read them aloud.

  “ ‘Curse . . . ’ ” he begins, hesitantly, his accent making the sounds comical. “Ah! Maledizione. ‘Curse the black . . .’ ”

  Rory comes up beside him. “ ‘Curse the black pack,’ ” he reads, and moves to the second stone, where much smaller letters are squashed tight together. “ ‘Let them be drowned. Make them go to the shore and be took.’ ”

  Per shifts his shoulders and makes an impatient sound. He doesn’t like stopping. Lino shrugs, looks at Rory, then at Silvia.

  “I go look,” he says, and runs ahead. He seems glad of the chance to escape the others’ company for a while.

  The landscape’s changing. On the horizon ahead are woods now. They’re not the dull green spindly woods of Home; they’re deep masses of autumn color, old green tinged with rust. The three of them walk through another set of buildings gathered close around the road. These are bleak and shattered like the village where they spent the night, all scabbing paint and empty windows sprouting weeds. They’ve started passing occasional cars in the road now. Not proper cars, any more than the houses are proper houses; they’re the shells of cars, like the dry papery crab shells that wash up on the Beach sometimes. The road’s more clogged underfoot, dotted with bits of brick and slate and broken glass. Curves of metal stick out from the undergrowth, and the last visible fragments of other buried things.

  More walking, a dip and a rise in the road, and they come to a large sign, a white rectangle planted on poles high enough not yet to have succumbed to the bramble. It has proper writing on it, neat black capital letters. They say:

  WELCOME TO PENZANCE

  PENSANS A’GAS DYNERGH

  Below them, in drippy, wobbly, painted black letters, it says

  POPULATION: 0

  The sign makes Rory’s head spin. He remembers Penzance. It’s the Mainland, the other Mainland, the one he’s failed to arrive in, the one with cars driving around and people everywhere, ice cream and helicopters and Scarlet’s big school and TV screens in shop windows all showing the same football match at the same time. He’s been there—here—lots of times. It’s where the helicopter and the ferry from the islands landed, and where the roads and trains start. It’s the connection, the first port of call.

  “Vieni!” Lino’s reappeared on the next crest of the road. He’s waving and shouting excitedly. “Subito!” He hops from foot to foot in impatience.

  After a moment’s hesit
ation Silvia hurries ahead, past Per. Rory jogs after her. When they catch up with Lino he beckons them over the road, his outsize eyes shining with enthusiasm.

  “Ecco,” he says, as the view to the east opens before them.

  Penzance. The land drops away below the crest to a scene of desolation. They can see for miles, across the breadth of a long curving bay, the sea glinting to the right and the green-brown land rising to the left. Between the two is a midden, a gigantic tide line of heaped and abandoned wreckage. In the near distance it’s chimneys, rooftops, blocky concrete buildings, sticking up like misshapen tombstones out of a jungle of rampant weeds. Beyond the dead town is the edge of the bay, lined along its whole length with the beached hulks of massive washed-up ships, tankers as big as villages tipped uselessly on their sides, hanging gardens of barnacles and rust. Shipping containers are strewn at all angles in the sand. Some of them have spilled their contents onto the beach, bursts of congealed lava.

  Beyond that, beyond the ruin and the graveyard at the edge of the sand, a fairy castle rises above the waste.

  It’s perched on a single steep cone of rock sticking out of the shallows at the far end of the bay. There’s a faint mist over the sea, a midday haze going slightly gold where the sun breaks through to touch it, and the castle emerges above that mist as if it’s floating on it, as if it’s lighter than air. Its top is all towers and pinnacles, like it’s part of the rock it sits on, the last delicate flourish of that soaring upthrust of stone. Slanting sunlight falls on those towers, turning them gold as well.

  “Ecco,” Lino says again, in a wonder-struck whisper.

  Rory’s seen the fairy castle before. He’s seen it with his own eyes and he’s seen its picture on postcards. In fact he thinks he sent a postcard of it himself once, when they were coming back from the Mainland and the helicopter was delayed so his father made them all write to Grandpa George in Weston-super-Mare. If you were sitting on the right side of the helicopter you got a view of it as you landed, the old castle, which looked like a church (or maybe it was an old church which looked like a castle), almost balanced on the summit of its own private hill just offshore. You could see tourists like colored beetles crawling up and down its slopes. He remembers what it was called: Saint Michael’s Mount. The name’s trying to connect him to something that can’t ever have been the same place, not this place. When they sent those postcards they went into town, into Penzance, to the post office. He remembers the post office, red and beige, people standing in line, a number flashing to tell you when it was your turn. If that memory’s true that post office ought to be down there somewhere below him. He looks down and sees sickly purple spears of buddleia sprouting from flat roofs, fallen trees lying on top of houses, every window black. Population zero. If it was ever the place he remembers, it isn’t anymore.