Rory backs around the tree. His legs feel tight and stringy but they’re doing the job still, somehow. “OK then,” he says. The owl flits down behind him and glides to a perch deeper in the woods. “Bye.”
“It’s not as complicated as it sounds,” the big fox is saying, as Rory turns his back.
“Dad! It’s running away!”
Which is overstating it, since the best he can do is a cramped and plodding jog, but they’re not coming after him, so he pushes on, following the owl because there’s nothing else to follow. “Look,” he hears the fox say, “why don’t we all try some fish instead?” Rory stumbles away into the shadows under the trees, and dives for a hole in the trunk, escaping just in time.
25
The wood grows thicker and darker the farther in he goes, which seems right. It’s full of whispers and half-glimpsed things. He’s quite sure at one point that he passes a big-nosed man no taller than his shins who’s hacking away at a rhododendron bush with a tiny golden axe and stops to mop his brow as Rory looks on. But Rory doesn’t look for long. He has to keep a careful eye on the owl. It’s very easy to lose sight of it in the tawny autumn trees.
They come to a tiny stream, really just a trickle in the mud. He lies flat to drink and discovers he’s too exhausted to get up again. At least the water gets the taste of sick out of his throat. Throwing up’s stopped him feeling hungry, which is something too.
The owl watches him from a bough while he lies there in the leaf mold. It looks annoyed with him but it doesn’t say anything. Perhaps if it did start talking it would be in Italian anyway. He’d like to get moving but it’s actually strangely peaceful here, wherever he is. “Sorry,” he says to the owl.
He tries to decide whether it really is Lino or not, and discovers something quite interesting. The difficulty turns out not to be about trying to figure out which of the alternatives (is Lino, isn’t Lino) is correct; it’s more that he doesn’t know what really means.
It reminds him of a conversation he had with Her once. He’d been trying to explain to her that she didn’t exist, not properly, not the way his mother and Laurel and Pink and Kate and all the others did. (He must have grown up a lot since then, he thinks. He’d never talk like that now.)
—But you weren’t there before.
—Where?
—Anywhere. You weren’t . . . There wasn’t any such thing.
—That’s a funny thing to say.
—There wasn’t. I remember. Everyone knows. You could sail around wherever you liked. There were lots of boats in The Old Days. All over the place.
—I remember that too. I remember watching them.
—No one ever saw anything like you. You weren’t . . . You just weren’t. Things like that didn’t happen.
(She waits for him to finish, curious.)
—They’re not real. You’re not. Not, like, really real.
(He thinks she’s going to get cross. He’d quite like her to get cross, actually, because then maybe she’d tell him why he was wrong, and explain What Happened. But—)
—Still. (She smiles her funny lopsided smile.) Here I am.
And here Rory is, in the Valley. He wonders how big it is. It feels like somewhere you’d measure in a way that wasn’t to do with distances.
He’s heard many times by now that no one ever comes back, but it’s not frightening. It’s very beautiful. There’s none of the debris from The Old Days at all, not even the cap of a plastic bottle or a scrap of a soggy label sticking out among the dead leaves. It feels untouched. He’s alone and completely lost but as he lies there listening to the trickle of water beside his head he doesn’t feel like he’s going to wander around hopelessly until he dies of starvation and exposure. It doesn’t feel like that sort of place. It feels more organized. Like it knows what it’s doing, even if it’s not telling you. He can well believe that no one ever comes back from it, because it doesn’t seem like the kind of place you’d go in and out of, like it was just sitting there waiting for you to decide what to do. He supposes he’ll never get out of it either but at the moment that doesn’t seem to matter so much. He doesn’t feel so much lost as found.
When he’s had his rest he gets to his feet. The owl swoops away at once and he limps after it. It’s leading him down a slope. Every direction is just trees. He comes to a patch of evergreen shrubs and loses sight of the owl there, but he can see clearer ground beyond so he keeps going anyway, squeezing through the dead-looking twiggy bits inside the shrubs. He wriggles out onto a grassy path just in time to see the bird flit out of sight over its far end, where the roof of a house is poking out between yellowing trees.
There’s a skeleton lying on the path. It has boots on its feet, trousers on its legs, and a coat on its back, but thin bones stick out of the cuffs of the coat and the head’s just a skull. A few spears of grass have grown up through the eye sockets. Stopping to look, Rory notices bits of more skeletons in the hedge beside the path, mostly hidden in the tangle. The toes of a pair of running shoes poke out from the bottom of the hedge.
A small thing neither animal nor person scurries out from a bunch of leathery leaves. “Travelers!” it says. It has arms and legs and a stumpy top bit like a miniature man but it’s all woody and gnarly, wound around with cobwebby scraps. It’s carrying something rattly in a tiny cup like the cap of an acorn. It races out onto the path in front of Rory and addresses itself to him. “Game of chance, sir?” The voice is crabbed and wheezy-croaky. It shakes the tiny cup. “Throw of the dice? Cast your fate in fortune’s lap?”
“No, thank you,” Rory says, looking for the owl.
“A question if you win. Any question you like. Answer guaranteed as honest as language allows. Go on, sir.” It rattles the cup in a manner which is probably supposed to be enticing. “You know you want to.”
He’d like to walk past but he’s having difficulty doing so. The owl’s disappeared, and the grotesque miniature thing keeps positioning itself so he feels like he’ll step on it unless he stays still. “I’m all right,” he says. “Thanks.”
“ ‘All right,’ says he. That’s a good one. Me oh my. All right, are you? Don’t you want to ask how to get out of here? Most do.” It jiggles in a way which might be intended to indicate the skeleton in the grass. “All of them, actually. Tell you what, sir. I’ll double my offer, how’s that? Two questions if you win. You get all the time you want to decide what to ask. I’d suggest along the lines of How do I escape the Valley and Will I make it out alive, but up to you, of course, up to you.”
“I’d rather not.”
The thing growls in frustration. “Three, then! Three questions. And no more haggling, three’s my limit.”
“Really,” Rory says, wondering if he can just kick the thing out of the way, though he doesn’t like the idea of touching it at all. “I’m fine.”
“Do you doubt me? Is that it? Here.” It holds up the cup as high as it can, about the level of Rory’s knee. “Inspect the dice. Roll them a few times if you like, you’ll find they land fairly and without favor. One throw each, highest total wins. What’s not to like?”
“What happens if I lose?”
“Oh! Well.” Its voice drops to a sort of gargling mumble. “The usual penalty.”
“The what?”
“Standard sort of thing. You know, your soul, or something of the— Now hold on, sir! Don’t be hasty!” Rory’s jumped around the skeleton to the edge of the path and is already hurrying past. “It’s nothing to worry about, surely?” It’s making no attempt to pursue him, just cawing at his back. “Mainstream opinion these days holds that you probably don’t even have a soul! One game? Please?” Against the most strenuous protest from his legs, he forces himself to break into a run again. When he looks over his shoulder nothing’s there but old bones in the grass.
The path brings him to a broken wooden gate and then on to the back of a broken house. It’s a big grey low-slung old-looking house traced with moss and ivy all the way to
its roof. Every one of its ground-floor windows is broken; they make a gallery of abstract pictures composed of glinting glass and darkness. The gutters hang like half-snapped branches. There’s no junk around, nevertheless. A meadow of wild grass has grown up around the house. Best of all, there’s a huge patch of bramble bursting out of the woods, and it’s thick with blackberries. He sets to work on them hungrily. They’re unbelievably sour-sweet and ripe. He works his way along the bramble until he finds himself around the other side of the house, the front. There are big hedges of box and yew here, once carefully sculpted but now bulging and sagging. A flight of stone steps leads down between them to some other buildings. There’s a signpost covered in bindweed. Curious, Rory pulls the tendrils away to read the signs. Down the steps they point to TOILETS CAFÉSHOP COMMUNITY CENTER. In the other direction, TRELOW HOUSE MAIN GATE CAR PARK. Café? he thinks, peering down the steps, and sees Silvia.
26
The owl chooses that moment to reappear. It sails over Rory’s head, making its whuk whuk whuk call, and lands on top of the barn she’s just stepped out from.
Rory watches, waiting for her to vanish like she did when the Riders were fording the stream in the haunted town. She doesn’t. She’s staring back at him. Her arms are fidgeting in a nervous, very un-Silvia-like way. She doesn’t look pleased to see him. She looks almost alarmed. It’s like she’s never seen him before.
She starts towards him. It’s very cluttered and overgrown where she is, a sort of courtyard in the middle of a group of beaten-up barns. She picks her away around the bowl of a broken fountain and stops, her route blocked by a barrier of upended picnic tables and a tangle of wires trailing loose from a solitary pole. The owl rasps again.
It’s definitely Silvia, but at the same time it isn’t. The difference is in her manner. She’s got the same face and everything but she seems completely different on the inside. She looks like she’s lost her way.
She stops on a buckled paving stone at the base of the steps.
“Hello?” she says. She appears not to know who Rory is. Something’s been erased from her. She looks (he gets it suddenly) younger, not in her face but in every other way. “English? Hello?”
“Um,” Rory says. This is frightening. It’s like looking at someone he knows but with a different person inside them. “What d’you mean, English?”
She lights up with mingled relief and surprise. “You speak Romani!”
“Silvia?”
The light vanishes. She flinches as if he’s aimed a punch at her. “Who told you my name?”
“Silvia, it’s—”
As suddenly as her relief turned to suspicion, the suspicion now turns into eager excitement. “Was it her? You must have seen her! Where is she?”
“Where’s who?”
“The English lady! She came up here somewhere but I can’t find her.” Clearly exasperated by Rory’s bewilderment, she stamps her foot. “The tall English lady! Didn’t she tell you to look for me? Where did you see her?”
Rory stands with his mouth open. It’s definitely Silvia, but it’s like she’s pretending to be a little girl.
“Please,” she says. “She’s my friend. She’s going to take me to England and adopt me. I can’t find her anywhere. She was going to visit the temple in the night. She said she’d be back before I woke up but I’ve been awake for ages. You must have seen her. A woman by herself. She’s tall; she’s got black hair. Not an old woman. Why won’t you talk to me? What’s wrong with you?”
“I . . .” He has to say something. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her lip trembles. Her hands make fists. “Did something happen to her? Where’s the temple? Can you show me how to get there?”
Rory looks back at the big house. It’s quite grand and old but no one would describe it as a temple. “Where’s what?”
“The temple of Apollo. It’s famous, you must know it. It’s in these hills somewhere. It must be along this road but I can’t read the signs, I don’t know all the Greek letters.”
“Who are you?” Rory whispers, wondering whether he ought to start getting properly frightened.
“I’m Silvia Ghinda. I’m going to be Silvia Ghinda Clifton when Ygraine adopts me. Clifton’s her name. It’s English. Who are you? You don’t look like a Roma boy.”
“Rory,” he says. He wants this to stop, now. “I’m Rory. Don’t you remember?”
“Rory? That’s not a Roma name.”
“It’s Scottish. I told you.”
She frowns in childlike confusion. “I don’t understand you,” she says. “Do you live here?”
“Here?” It strikes him that he can’t even begin to say where here is.
“Can you read the signs for me?” She’s too anxiously impatient to wait for an answer. “If we keep going up the road we’re bound to see one.”
There’s something about her eyes. It’s like she’s not taking things in. She doesn’t look or sound mad, but she must be mad. She’s turning this way and that, peering as if waiting for someone else to appear.
“Which road do you mean?” he says cautiously.
“This one, obviously. Or are there others? Is there another way?” She comes up one step and examines him carefully, as if he’s the mad one. “Are you all right?”
Perhaps he isn’t. He’s just been talking to a bunch of foxes, after all.
“Silvia,” he says. “It’s me. I want to help you but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her eyes moisten. “Why is everyone so stupid?” she shouts, but it’s a sad anger, feeble, defeated, not like Silvia’s fiery contempt at all. She cups her hands around her mouth and calls, “Ygraine! Ygraine!”
“Don’t you remember any of it?” Rory says. “Lino? Per? We came on the boat together. I wasn’t supposed to be with you but I came by mistake. The beach? Any of that?” All he’s doing is frightening her. “You really can’t remember?”
“Something’s wrong with you,” she whispers, after a long pause.
Why is he pressing on? It must be because he so badly wants this to be Silvia, someone who’ll look after him and show him what to do. He won’t be lost if he’s with her because the real Silvia can’t get lost, she told him so herself. “All those things you told me on the boat? You told me all about yourself, remember? The orphanage? And that camp with the old woman, where you lived.” She makes a squeaky gasping noise and puts her hand to her mouth in shock. She does remember, then. “Where they made you tell people’s fortunes or whatever? And then that teacher rescued you—”
She springs up the steps and grabs him. Ordinarily it would be scary but her hands feel weak and her face is full of desperation. “Please tell me where she is,” she says. “I’ll do anything. I’ll give you the car. It’s down in that village. Look, I’ve got the keys.” She pats the pockets of her coat distractedly. “We’ve got some money too, I’ll give you all of it.”
She looks so terribly sad that Rory surprises himself by putting a hand on her cheek, like he’s seen Viola do with Pink; like Kate’s done to him sometimes when no one else would. “Silvia,” he says. “It’s me. Rory. I haven’t seen anyone else. I don’t know what you mean.”
She stares at him, wide-eyed. She folds her coat over herself as if she’s cold.
“Sorry,” he adds.
“How did you know my name?”
“We met. You don’t remember. Something’s happened to you. We’re friends.” She’s shaking her head. “I wish you could remember. I was so happy to see you.”
“Are you from the orphanage?”
“I’m not.”
She backs away. “You must be. You’re lying. You must have followed us all the way here.”
“Where?”
“How could you have done that? You’re not old enough to drive.” She stares around wildly. Whenever she’s looking away from him her eyes don’t seem to focus properly. “You’re with someone! Is it the police?”
Ro
ry’s beginning to understand, if understand’s the right word. “I’m not with anyone, I promise. Silvia?”
“Did the police catch her?”
“Where do you think we are?”
“What?”
“Tell me.” He tries to keep his voice gentle. “Where is this?”
She peers at him again, keeping her distance this time. “What do you mean? Arcadia? Do you mean this road? I don’t know where it goes.”
Rory points back at the big house. “What’s that?” he says.
She looks over his shoulder, shielding her eyes from an absent sun. “What? Where?”
“Behind me. What can you see?”
“There’s nothing there. Just more mountains. Is that where the temple is?” She puts her hand to her mouth and shouts again, “Ygraine!” There’s no echo. Everything’s soft, shrouded in rampant growth.
“You’re looking for someone, aren’t you.”
“Ygraine!” She twists around and shouts louder. “Ygraine! Can you hear me?”
“Is it the English teacher you told me about? The one who took you from the camp?”
She backs away from him again, all the way down the steps. He hates seeing her so frightened.
“I don’t like you,” she says. “You’re scaring me.”
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
“Do you want her to adopt you instead? Is that why you followed us? She won’t. She chose me. I’m special; I have a gift. We’ve already arranged it all. We’re going to Kyparissa tomorrow to get on a boat.”
“I’m not trying to do anything like that. Something’s happened to you, Silvia. I just want to help.”
“Leave me alone.” She’s edging back towards the courtyard with the broken fountain. The owl’s still perched on a roof beyond, watching. “Go away.”
He puts his hands out to show he’s not going to do anything bad. “How old are you?” he says.
“I can look after myself,” she says. “You better not try anything.”
“I’m not going to, I swear,” he says. “How old are you? Please?”
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