It turns out she’s going to sleep up in the loft as well, along with the other woman who was with their group before. She’s called Sandra, she says, acting friendlier than she did before, though she’s still a bit awkward with Rory. She and Soph change into big T-shirts. They’ve got one for him too. It’s old and very soft, and though he’s cold while he’s getting his own clothes off as soon as he burrows himself down under blankets he’s incredibly comfortable, so comfortable nothing else matters anymore except the fact that he’ll soon be asleep. Soph snuffs out the lantern and he hears the women settling themselves down. There are others in the room below, talking quietly. It’s white noise, like surf.
“So what were you and the Prof having your little chin-wag about at the end there?” It’s completely dark but there’s no mistaking Soph’s voice.
“Let the poor kid sleep,” Sandra says.
“Just wondering.”
“Who’s the proff?” Rory likes the way Soph talks to him. She’s one of those adults who can talk to children without looking like it’s hurting them to try.
“The Prof! Professor Aitch Lightfoot. That’s the old biddy you’ve been talking to for the past hour.”
“Is she your ruler?”
Sandra giggles. She’s a broad-shouldered, strong-looking woman with a husky voice but her giggle makes her sound like Pink.
“We don’t have a ruler,” Soph says. “Who’d want one of those?”
“She is a billion times cleverer than everyone else, though,” Sandra says.
“Two billion times cleverer than you.”
“So,” Sandra goes on, unruffled, “I can see how you’d think so.”
“You did great,” Soph says. “Pretty intimidating setup for a kid.”
“What’s going to happen now?” Rory says.
There’s an awkward silence. He hears Soph rustling like she’s sat up.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” she says. “Get some sleep now and we’ll get you sorted out in the morning.”
“Can I go home?”
The awkwardness thickens.
“Back to the Scillies?” Sandra says. “That’s unlikely, I’m afraid.”
“The thing is, Tiger,” Soph says—toiger—“nobody goes out of sight of land. That’s the problem.”
“No satellites,” Sandra says. “I don’t even know how you’d find the Scillies. Even if someone was prepared to risk the sea.”
“Which they aren’t. Don’t set your heart on it, OK? But maybe someday, who knows.”
He pulls the blankets tighter around himself. He’s so tired everything feels like it’s happening at a remove, even his own thoughts. He’s experimenting with the thought: I’m never going to see my mother or Parson’s or Laurel or Viola or Kate again. I’m going to live the rest of my life here. He can feel the terrible bleak misery of it, but it’s so wrapped up in tiredness and sheer strangeness it’s like the misery doesn’t quite touch him.
“Look on the bright side,” Soph says. “That gypsy chick could have dragged you into the Valley. At least you’re alive. And if you’ve got to be anywhere in what’s left of Cornwall, Dolphin’s as good as it gets.”
“They might all be alive in there,” Sandra says. She sounds sleepy too. “Just because no one comes back doesn’t have to mean they’re all dead.”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Soph.
Sandra rolls over. The boards squeak under her. “They say there’s a place in the middle of the Valley where all your wishes come true.”
“Is there really?” Rory says.
Now it’s Soph who laughs, a low gentle laugh. “Might be,” she says. “I’m happy not knowing, thanks all the same.”
“Hester said you’re not allowed in.”
“Where? The Valley? Oh, don’t tell me . . . What’s that thing of hers? ‘There are powers which care nothing for us’? Did she give you that one?” She chuckles again. “Swallowed a whole fucking shelf of dictionaries, the Prof.”
“Language, Soph.”
“Hey, I’m sure the kid’s heard worse. Haven’t you, Tiger?”
Silence. He thinks he hears rain outside. More white noise.
“To be fair,” Soph goes on, “she did actually live there once, didn’t she?”
“Don’t you ever get tired, Soph?”
“Still a little wound up, I reckon.”
“There’ll be a ride tomorrow, I bet. You could volunteer for that.”
“What, you think we’ll go over to Goonhilly?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Makes sense. It’s what I’d do. If the Prof can’t help, poor little Amber’s the next best bet.”
“Yeah. That’s what Sal was saying.”
“Ellie’ll go, won’t she? Might as well take the whole posse.”
“More than one, if you ask me. The Pack’s been sniffing around Truro.”
“Fuckers.”
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could use this staff thing to get rid of them.”
“Declare a national holiday, I reckon.”
“Do you think there’s a chance?”
“I don’t know. This whole business is pretty fucked-up. On the other hand”—a long sigh—“I’ve never seen anything like what I saw today, and that includes some seriously weird shit. And the old coot’s dog looked like it had had forty thousand volts.”
“Was it really like that? Fiery ghosts?”
“I don’t know what it was really like. It was fucking whacked. Poor Ace.”
A very long silence.
“Christ,” Soph says, to herself, later. “I need nicotine. Hey. Kid. Kid. Do they have tobacco out on the Scilly Isles? I’d try sailing you there myself. Well, I’d think about it.”
Someone squirms their blankets around.
“Kid? You asleep?”
He is.
* * *
Or perhaps he isn’t. The sounds go on for a while around him, the white noises, the mumbles and rustles. Sounds from the room below. He dreams of his mother and father arguing downstairs, their despair whispering up through the floorboards. You can’t stay here. . . . I don’t care, I’m not letting Rory go. . . . What do you think you’re going to do when the food runs out? He thinks he’s in the Abbey, bedded down in the big room where the women snuffle and snore. He wonders why he’s there instead of in his bed at Parson’s and then remembers it’s because Ol’s dead. The white noises bleed together and become Her voice, the voice of the sea in a girl’s mouth, telling him her secrets. I loved a boy once but he left me and never came back. “I’d stay with you,” he says, bravely, and She smiles and answers Yes, you will, one day. Her voice unwinds into separate strands until the dark loft’s full of whispers like tiny waves over shingle. Together they say his name. Rory. Rory. Awaken. Has he gone to sleep, then?
He sits up. The loft’s not dark anymore. It’s glimmering with a strange soft light. It’s cold. He reaches around to pull the blankets over his shoulders and sees there’s a man in the room, a naked man the color of a dying fire. Rory, the man says. He might not even be a man because he doesn’t have a willy, but he’s not a woman either. He can’t be anything. He’s a phantom made of congealed light. His voice blends weirdly with the deep breathing of the two sleeping women. Rory. Do you hear us? Do you see us? There’s only one phantom, though its edges swim and shimmer. Answer us, lost child. We too are lost. It’s in the corner of the room beyond where Sandra’s sleeping, by the staff. It reaches out beseeching arms. Its substance ripples like water. Are you awake? It seems unlikely, but he nods nevertheless. He’s not frightened. Nothing’s real enough for fear. It’s dream rather than nightmare, all detached and obscure. Speak to us. Without your welcome we cannot stay.
“Who are you?” he says. He hears his own voice say it, very quietly. He mustn’t wake the women.
The phantom’s face is smooth and sculpted like a face from the comics. It has shapes for eyes but no eyes in them. It smiles. The smile makes the room feel colder.
We are friendless as yourself. We are forsaken.
“Is this a dream?”
It is not. Two mortals lie here asleep. It is you only we came to supplicate.
“What do you want?”
A master.
As always in dreams, there’s a feeling that it makes sense, even though it makes no sense.
“Why do you keep saying ‘we’?”
We are legion. We will do as you bid us. We will guide you home.
“Where am I?”
Among strangers and old spirits. Be our master and we will teach you all their names.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Wisdom. Power.
“Are you the fiery ghosts?”
Stand, the phantom says, with a little hiss. Cross the room and take the staff. We will teach you the words of command.
He doesn’t get up. As long as he’s in bed with blankets around him it’s close enough to dreaming.
The phantom wavers and appears to grow bigger, or perhaps come closer, which he doesn’t like.
We would kneel before you, it says. Its voice (or voices) is (are?) totally passionless, in the same way that there’s no doubt or dread in his heart despite his feeling that something’s very much not right. Rise. Accept our homage.
He shakes his head.
If you do not desire us, the phantom whispers, then pity us. We too are far from home. Now it’s definitely gliding towards him, slithering snakewise through the air.
“Go away,” he says.
The phantom shivers and diminishes. More of the room’s natural dark seeps into its texture. We are obedient, it whispers. It’s retreated. Would you not command us so? Take the staff and speak the words and we will serve you. You might leave this house tonight. We fear no night-walking spirits. We can guide you home.
Home. He’s got a strong feeling he mustn’t let this thing come home. It’s important. Someone told him.
“I don’t want to,” he says.
How will you recross the sea without us? The nymphs will not suffer your passage.
“Leave me alone.”
It gets darker. The manlike shape has blurred until it’s little more than a molten haze. It’s his dream, after all: he can decide what happens. “Don’t come back,” he adds.
You are no man. The voices are as faint as blowing sand. A coward boy, sleeping among women. You are ignorant as empty air. We will seek a better master.
“Yeah, well,” Rory says, “I don’t care.” It’s a rubbish comeback. He’s always been terrible at it. Ol said he couldn’t be bothered to tease Rory because it wasn’t even fun.
You will wish you had been braver, it whispers, when we meet again.
“Shut up. Go away.” He thinks of the way they’d say it in the comics. “Begone.”
It’s perfectly dark. He can feel the coarse warmth of the blankets clenched in his fists. He’s definitely awake. He said that last word too loudly and heard himself saying it. It’s like pinching yourself.
Someone shuffles.
“Rory?”
It’s Sandra. She’s got a nice ordinary voice. She sounds like someone from The Old Days.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he whispers.
“Bad dream?”
He lies back down, pulling the covers to his nose. “Yeah,” he says.
From somewhere outside comes the ghostly call of an owl.
19
If this was the comics there’d be a king. Or maybe a queen, with Lustrous Raven Hair and the downward turn in the corners of her mouth which means Serious Lady instead of Nice Lady. There’d be someone, anyway, in a big room with splendid decorations, and everyone else would be slightly afraid of them and stand respectfully waiting to be told what to do.
There’s no king or queen at Dolphin House. In all sorts of other ways—the horses, the food turning over a fire, the ragged children running around (though they’re chasing a football), the blacksmith banging away at his forge—it’s just like something out of the comics, the Knights in Armor stories from the old hardback comics, which Rory liked best (Ol said they were girly except for the war stories. Britischer Schwein!) But no one’s in charge. People are constantly gathering in little clumps and chatting about what to do, and splitting up and joining other little clumps and changing their mind. It’s strangely like Home that way, except they seem to get it all done more quickly. Also, he has to go off and poo in a bucket and then carry the bucket around the side of the big hill to a place where there’s a trench for emptying it; afterwards he has to throw a spadeful of earth in. That never happens in the comics.
Rory doesn’t even realize that some sort of Plan’s been settled on until he comes across Ellie and a man sitting on a log together wrapping what appear to be strips of old sheets around their arms and legs, and Ellie asks if he’s going to ride with her again.
“Where?”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“Coming where?”
“Hey,” she calls to another man, who’s leading a shaggy horse out from a nearby gate. “Is the kid coming?”
“Up to him, I suppose,” the man calls back.
“There you go then,” Ellie says to Rory. “If you are, you’re probably riding with me again. I’m quite little and I’ve got a big horse.”
“And she’s the best rider,” the man sitting beside her on the log says.
“And that, yes.”
“Where are we going?”
“Up to Goonhilly.” She holds a layer of sheets in place over one arm while the man starts winding twine around them, tying them on. It’s like she’s putting on a layer of padding. “To visit our local oracle.”
“Know what that means?” the man says.
Rory’s shy about getting things wrong in front of these people, so he shakes his head.
“Means she knows stuff,” the man says.
“Sometimes,” Ellie says, like she’s not at all convinced.
“More often than not,” the man says. Ellie cocks her eyebrows.
“What for?”
“The idea’s to see what we can do with that staff of yours,” Ellie says.
“It’s not mine,” Rory says quickly. He’s been bothered all morning by his dream-which-wasn’t-a-dream, the kind of bothered you can’t tell anyone about.
“Well, whoever’s it was, it’s ours now, and it might come in useful.”
“Sal’s hoping the kid’ll come,” the man says, exposing himself as the normal kind of adult, the kind that’s happier talking about children than to them. “Knows more about it than the rest of us do. Might recognize something Amber says.”
“Fluent in gibberish at all?” Ellie asks him. Even the man chuckles at that.
“What’s Amber?”
“Amber’s the oracle.”
“A person?”
“Oh yes. Actually, she’s probably about your age.”
“They might get on,” the man says, winking at Ellie. He holds his arm out and she starts wrapping it the same way he did for her. She’s changed some of her rings since yesterday. There’s a new one with a gargoyle face, and one studded with purple and black cubes.
“So what do you think?” Ellie says to Rory. “We’ve got a double saddle, it’ll be a lot more comfortable. And I certainly won’t let any of Sal’s posse tie you up.”
“Less uncomfortable at least,” the man says.
“All right,” Rory says, mostly, if he’s honest, because he likes the idea of going with Ellie, though it’s also true that he’d rather not have to hang around the camp with the other children, who haven’t been particularly friendly so far that morning.
“All right?” the man says, grinning. He’s shaved his head almost bald and has a hard, pitted face; the grin exposes hard, pitted teeth. “See oracles every day over on Scilly, do you? Got hundreds of them, have you?”
“Stop it, Rog,” Ellie says, not crossly.
“What are you doin
g that for?” Rory asks her. Ellie’s tugging the twine as tight as it’ll go. She and Rog exchange a different kind of look, more serious, before she answers.
“It’s normal,” she says. “We always prepare before we ride out from Dolphin.”
“Sensible precautions,” Rog says, as if reciting something.
“We’ll be fine. It’s not all that long a ride, you’ll be glad to hear.”
Draped on the log beside her is a black leather jacket. Rory didn’t recognize it as clothes at first because it’s sewn all over with pieces of metal: chain links, rings, rivets, eyelets. Now that he’s looking properly he sees that quite a lot of the people he thought were just standing around fiddling with things are, in fact, arming themselves. As he scans them, a skinny man with a straggly beard moves apart from the people standing nearby and unfolds a long leather satchel on the ground. Out of it he takes a sword. An actual sword.
Ellie sees what’s caught his eye. “Ah,” she says. “Perse. He does love his big weapon.”
Rog giggles. “What’s his real name? Brian?”
“Quiet,” Ellie says. The man with the sword hefts it in his hands and waves it around a few times as if pretend fighting. “God help us. Where did he get that thing?”
“Off that loony up by St. Ives.”
Ellie shrugs. “I don’t remember that one.”
“Called himself the Pendragon.”
“That doesn’t narrow the field much.”
“Some kind of hobbyist. He had bits of chain mail too. Shame we lost that.”
“I wish he wasn’t coming,” Ellie says, watching the man with the sword out of the corner of her eye. “He’s going to take his own arm off one of these days.”
Rog grimaces. “You know what he’s like. Missed a fight yesterday, he’ll be desperate for something to come along today.”
“Rog,” Ellie warns.
“Eh.” Rog looks at Rory as if only just noticing him. “Just kidding. There won’t be any fighting or anything.”
But when all the groups finally assemble by the gate at the end of the long avenue of trees, there’s an unmistakable sense of an armed expedition. There are about twelve or fifteen of them (it’s hard to count with them all milling around), mostly but not all women, and every one of them is padded or cloaked or helmeted in a ragtag assortment of homespun armor. He sees Sal carrying her motorbike helmet under her arm, and Jody looking more than a bit silly with lumpy stuffing under her trousers and coat, and Soph wearing a tunic of mismatched metal sheets overlapping like scales. Soph sticks out because hers is actually quite striking: some of the scales are tinged with rust or oil maybe, so she’s glistening almost-colors, like a fish. Haze is there too. Among the men is a long-haired, muscled young bloke who came up to Rory earlier that morning and asked him in a low embarrassed voice whether he knew anything about Tiffany Someone-or-Other from Maries; he didn’t. A lot of the Riders have things which look like weapons sticking out of saddlebags or slung over their backs, not just Perse and his sword but lengths of wood and bicycle chains (the women seem to prefer the bicycle chains). One of the clubs has nails sticking out all over its top.
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