Arcadia

by James Treadwell

  Sal’s got the staff. He sees it poking out by her leg as they ride under the strange assortment of things (a teddy bear, a belt, a mobile phone, a framed photo, a plastic milk bottle) suspended from the trees at the gate. He has a sudden feeling that he ought to go up to Sal and tell her they should ride to wherever the nearest cliffs are and throw the staff into the sea, or maybe take it somewhere far away, dig it a grave, and bury it. But he doesn’t. Who’d listen to him anyway? Hester might, he thinks, but he hasn’t seen her today. He’s overheard someone saying her legs were bad, and talking about poppy juice. (There’s a scene in one of the old comics where the hero’s fallen down a mountain in Tibet and gets rescued by a Villager with funny-shaped eyes and a big glossy curly beard who takes him to his humble goat-shed and gives him a bowl to drink, saying Here, stranger . . . Milk of the poppy: he never understood but always liked the idea of a place where flowers have milk.)

  It’s a cool grey day, of a kind he recognizes from the islands, blowy and hinting at scattered rain. If he could see the sea there’d be ghost curtains moving over it, distant showers. They’ve found him a warm hooded coat and a black-and-yellow shirt with a logo that says CORNISH PIRATES. He didn’t want to give up his own shirt but Soph said it stank and they have soap. It’s very alarming being so high off the ground, perched across the back of this huge swaying horse, and his legs and bum start to get achy quite quickly, but it’s not so bad with a saddle to sit on and Ellie showing him how to hold himself. And being high up means he can see over the hedges sometimes, across the folds and rises of the green-brown land, studded with dull-windowed ruins and barns swamped in ivy and little dots of color which must be late wildflowers. The breeze rolls stripes across tall grass.

  Ellie’s in a chatty mood, which is OK because she’s just chatting, not trying too hard to be friendly, and she doesn’t mind if he just listens. She tells him about the things hanging over the entrance gate. Everyone living in the camp at Dolphin has to put one up, so they know they belong there (what she actually says is “so the house knows they belong there” but that’s more like the kind of thing Esme would say, and small sturdy sarcastic Ellie’s about as unlike Esme as anyone could be, so Rory wonders if he heard wrong). She won’t tell him what her thing is. She tells him a story about one woman whose token kept falling down no matter how carefully they tied it: one day she hurt a child and they expelled her. She tells him that Dolphin House is very old, and so has stronger attachments, which makes it safer. (She doesn’t say what this means.) It’s true that there’s no king or queen. Thinking of Kate and Fi, he asks who organizes their jobs, and she says they just work it out, and if people don’t like it they go and live elsewhere. He looks around as they ride and wonders where those other places might be. The land’s so devastated, so empty. It’s like a world before people. Or after, maybe, he thinks, as they pass a double decker bus leaning into a stand of trees, branches nosing through its long-broken windows, its green paintwork scoured and peeling so it’s dappled like the autumn woods.

  They go at a steady walk, jangling and clanking and talking. It’s a louder ride than yesterday’s. Rory wonders whether that’s because there are men with them (Rog has come, and the man with the scarf who’s called Baker, though he’s not wearing the scarf today). One man in particular, an older-looking man whose neck is black with tattoos, rides up and down the group a lot making loud comments and laughing noisily. He tries to chat with Rory, stuff about how Rory’s one of them now, but he’s definitely one of those grown-ups who sounds like he’s faking it when he talks to children, so he gives up after a while. Ellie doesn’t seem to like him much either. He asks her why there are men riding today when there weren’t any yesterday.

  “Don’t you have the man-eaters in the Scillies, then?” she asks, surprised. “Yes you do, I heard you talk about them. The sirens.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Yeah.”

  “We’re not going in sight of the coast today,” she says. “Up at Goonhilly you can see the sea in the distance but it’s so far off it’s safe for the men.”

  Rog is riding nearby. He spurs his horse alongside. “We’re an endangered species,” he says to Rory, winking again. “We blokes. Need lots of looking after, hey El? Wouldn’t want you girls to run out of men.”

  “Goodness no,” Ellie says very drily. “Imagine that.”

  “Used to like a bit of the old surfing,” Rog goes on. “But I’ve had to give that up. Remember Simon, El? Smiley Simon? Thought he’d be all right ’cos he was gay. Turns out the man-eaters don’t care about your sexual preferences.” He rolls his eyes at the last two words, making them into some sort of joke which Rory doesn’t get. “They just want us all dead.”

  “Rog.”

  “What?”

  “You weren’t in the audience last night, were you?”

  “Better things to do,” he says roguishly.

  Ellie’s not interested in sharing his joke. “Rory told us that every man in the Scillies is gone. He was the last boy.”

  “Oh,” Rog says, not quite abashed, but getting there. “I see. That can’t be much fun for the . . .” He sniffs, wipes his mouth, thinks better of whatever he was going to say.

  “Did you have brothers and sisters?” Ellie says.

  “A brother and a sister. They left with my dad.”

  “Left?”

  “Sailed. They went to find out What Happened.”

  “Oh.”

  “Me and Mum stayed behind.”

  “You never found out what happened to them?”

  “No. They were supposed to go to the Mainland.”

  “Let’s hope they didn’t,” Ellie says. He wasn’t expecting that answer and has to think about it.

  “Do you miss your mum?” she says, while he’s still thinking.

  “Dunno.” He’s embarrassed now.

  “I miss mine.” Ellie has an even voice. She says everything as if she’s very slightly bored, or perhaps very slightly annoyed.

  “Where is she?”

  “No idea. She was at home with my younger brother and sister when it all started. In Hertfordshire. I tried to get back there after the blizzards but it was chaos.”

  “Is that far? Couldn’t you look for her?”

  “Look for her? Up country?”

  He’s said the wrong thing. “Sorry.”

  “Maybe one day,” she says. “If we can get rid of the Pack. And if I can raise an army to go with me.”

  Rog chips in, trying to be encouraging. “If your mum was tough like you she’ll have been all right.”

  “She wasn’t,” Ellie says.

  “Oh.”

  Jody drops back to join them, relieving an uncomfortable pause. “Hear about the big bastard?” she says.

  “I heard they took him already,” Rog says.

  “Looks like it,” Jody says. “Just been talking to Haze about it. She said bits of the twine had gone black.”

  “She went down to check this morning?”

  “Her and Stella. He was gone when they got there so they didn’t bother looking close. But she’s wondering now why the ties’d be charred.”

  “How does she know they’re charred if she wasn’t looking closely?” Ellie says.

  Jody gives Ellie a cross look. “Just saying what she told me.” She turns the look on Rory. “Made me wonder if the boy might have any ideas.”

  “About what?” says Rog.

  “Whether something funny happened down there in the night.”

  “Rory was asleep in the top of our barn in the night,” Ellie says.

  “I know that,” Jody says. “Whether he knows what that big bloke might have got up to, is what I’m talking about.”

  “Can’t see there’s much point worrying about it now the man-eaters got him,” Rog says.

  “Man-eaters don’t set things on fire,” Jody says. It’s obvious she’s not that friendly with Rog and Ellie.

  “Who said anything about a fire?”

  �
��Does any of this mean anything to you, Rory?” Ellie says, in a way which invites him to say no.

  “No.”

  “Get Haze to tell you,” Jody says, spurring her horse ahead again.

  “Maybe later,” Rog calls after her. But now the slow parade is halting in front of them.

  They’ve reached a rise where the road widens. The front group of Riders has stopped. Ellie leans against Rory’s back to make the reins tighter and pulls their horse up too, letting it scrunch at the hedge while they wait.

  “Here we go then,” Rog mutters.

  At the head of the procession Sal’s wheeled around to face the rest of them. She stands up in the saddle.

  “Usual rules from here on,” she calls. “Let’s be extra careful, we don’t know if our cargo’s going to make a difference. Minimal talking and even less looking, all right? El, you’ll look after the kid?”

  Ellie raises an arm in acknowledgment.

  “What’s going on?” Rory says, alarmed. Ellie’s doing something with a strap around his waist.

  “Think of this,” she says, tugging the strap through a buckle and pulling it tight, so he’s suddenly fastened to the saddle, “as your safety belt. There’s nothing to worry about as long as you don’t get off.”

  “Helston up ahead,” Rog says. “Right close to the Valley.”

  “You might see or hear some weird things,” Ellie says, nudging the horse forward as the line starts moving again.

  “Or smell,” adds Rog.

  “Ignore everything,” Ellie says. “The best thing is not to even look.”

  “Like what?”

  “Shh now. Talking’s a bad idea too. It seems to get them excited.”

  “Who?”

  “Shh.”

  They’re descending now, and it’s not just the chatter that’s gone quiet. The whole noise of their passage seems suddenly muffled. Very soon Rory sees why. The horses are no longer trampling on a hard road. Under the scattering of debris there are still patches of decaying tarmac but it’s now mostly grass, moss, ferns, breaking through the road like craters from green bombs. The line of riders squeezes to one side ahead and slows down, as if negotiating an obstacle. When it’s their turn to reach it Rory looks down and sees a neat ring of mushrooms in the middle of the road, sprouting from a swathe of flattened grass.

  Then they’re on the outskirts of a town.

  It’s not like Penzance at all. Penzance was a jumble of rubbish and decay. Nothing’s broken here, though the feeling of emptiness is even deeper. The paint on the walls of the houses is streaked and bulging with damp, but no worse. The doors still have numbers on them. There are cars sitting by the sides of the road, sticky with dried sap and dusted in cobwebby old leaves but not dismembered or rusting open. They pass a shop which could almost be a shop from The Old Days. Its sign is tatty but legible: R & P NEWSAGENTS. Its awning advertises Sandwiches Off License Hot & Cold Drinks. In an upstairs window of the neighboring house a pair of straw dolls look out from the sill, as if someone still lives there.

  But no one does. The town’s been invaded, not by ruin but by the not-town, the country. Its streets and pavements have turned into paths and fields, their edges are like gardens, and the old gardens behind them have turned into secret jeweled jungles, unfathomable thickets of bushes and climbers where flowers hide in deep shadow. The roofs are half moss. One terraced house has tipped back from its neighbors like a dislodged tooth, lifted by the massive root of a chestnut tree in the middle of the road. Saw-toothed yellow leaves float down as they ride under the tree. A door creaks and slams behind them. Rory twitches around, only for Ellie to straighten him at once. She puts her fingers to her lips.

  The side streets are dark mouths. Up one of them he glimpses colored lights near the ground, flicking around each other like dragonflies. Ellie nudges him in the back: don’t look. He doesn’t really see why he shouldn’t. He can feel the other Riders’ anxiety all around him but as far as he’s concerned he’d much rather this than Penzance. Streetlamps bend over the road on either side, wound to half their height in some plant with flowers like tiny spotted bells. For a moment he thinks he can hear them ringing. The sound makes him think of silver and rain. Between three of the posts hangs an enormous veil of spiderwebs, threads delicate as dew.

  The sloping road begins to descend more steeply, and he hears running water. A little farther and they come to a river, running left to right. It’s cut through the town like a cleaver. Upstream it tumbles through buildings, and where its course meets them their walls and corners have simply vanished, sliced away into nothing. It spills across the green road and drops over a lip on the downstream side into dense woods, in the middle of which Rory can just about see a long pond with a bandstand and a playground beside it. Five or six swans are paddling around in the shade.

  The horses don’t want to go into the river. The riders at the front urge them towards the ford at a canter but the animals shy away each time. One woman’s thrown off. She remounts hurriedly, looking around in fear as if the ground might swallow her for standing on it, but eventually all of them have to dismount and lead the horses, pulling their reins and smacking their rumps, dragging them across. This leaves Rory the only one mounted, so he sees Silvia before anyone else does.

  She’s running down the way they’ve just come, close under the dripping stone walls of the old part of the town. She’s running fast, stumbling, looking over her shoulder. Rory’s so amazed to see her that at first he can barely draw a breath, let alone cry out. Her face is full of terror. She looks like she hasn’t even seen the knot of Riders wrestling with their horses. “Hey!” he manages to blurt, but the wrestling’s making quite a lot of noise now, and no one notices. Silvia staggers to a halt as she comes in sight of the river. She stares ahead, breathing hard, totally oblivious to everyone else. Rory tries to turn himself round in the saddle so he can see her properly, forgetting he’s strapped in. The moment he starts twisting against the strap Ellie stops pulling the horse, splashes close, and grabs his leg. “That’s—” Rory begins, but Ellie hisses at him to be quiet. Why hasn’t Silvia noticed them at all? She looks dazed, rapt. She glances over her shoulder and then starts towards the river with a visible spasm of dread. Some of the others have noticed her by now but they look only for a second before turning away without a word or making any attempt to help, though Silvia stumbles in the current, falling to her knees before pushing herself back up, her hands muddy. Rory squirms; Ellie grips him tighter.

  “Don’t!” she says, as sharply as she dares. “Whatever you think you’re seeing, it’s not really there.”

  Something’s not right. He’s suddenly not even sure it’s Silvia at all, though she’s a gypsy woman with a messy tangle of black hair and Silvia’s clothes. She looks like someone younger, smaller. She wades on through the current. “Rory,” Ellie snaps at him, “stop looking!”

  How can he stop? It is Silvia, but she’s changing before his eyes. It’s as if the river’s whittling her down. The water’s up to her thighs where it was only running over her shins before. Her face is turning bright-eyed and smooth. She hitches up her jacket to stop the current tearing the hem away. It’s suddenly loose on her, much too loose. She shakes drops out of her hair and lets it go. She takes the last few steps across to the far bank. A girl of perhaps Rory’s age clambers out onto the pale flat grass, a curly-haired gypsy girl. She’s smiling triumphantly. She stretches her arms to the sky, hands open. Invisible sunlight falls on her face. Then she vanishes into thin air.

  “Rory!” Ellie’s shaking his leg. He blinks. “Look at me! What’s my name?”

  “Ellie?” he says uncertainly. Is this another trick question?

  “Eyes down,” she says. She’s cross. “Now.” He complies. She sounds surprisingly fierce when she’s cross. He sneaks glances when she’s not looking but there’s no sign of the Silvia girl anywhere. All the horses get safely across and Ellie mounts up behind him again.

  “Wha
tever you saw,” she whispers in his ear, “forget it. Shut your eyes. Keep them shut.”

  He doesn’t want to make her any angrier so he keeps his head half-bowed and scrunches up his eyelids, pretending they’re closed though he can still see out through a slit. They’re riding up now between grey little houses and tatty workshops and sheds, every cranny in the concrete bursting with stalks or saplings. Rory can hear fairground music but he knows better than to ask about it. He’s turbulent inside. Even if it wasn’t really Silvia at all it was a reminder of her. She may have fooled him and abandoned all of them but all he has to do is think of her and straightaway it’s obvious she knows something none of these other people know, she’s seen things no one else he’s ever met has seen. Even when he closes his eyes properly he can feel the Riders’ fear all around him. Silvia wouldn’t have been afraid of this place. Or of anything.

  And she told him he had a gift too.

  He keeps a surreptitious watch in case she appears again, girl or woman. He sees a couple of faces in the windows of houses, brief and ghostly, but they’re older, maybe not even people’s faces at all, and Ellie snaps at him when she catches him looking. Farther on there’s a row of starlings on a flat garage roof. Their heads all turn slowly together as the Riders pass. They’re almost out of the town now, wide fields spreading out around them again. The forlorn rectangles of road signs mark the horizon like the standing stones of a lost civilization.