Arcadia

by James Treadwell

  “Let me see.” Rose is straining her neck forward, hands on her knees. “Bring it here.”

  “You can come and look if you want. It’s special.”

  Rose uncurls herself and slides down the pile onto the road, bones slipping noisily after her. At ground level (and with her mouth closed) she looks less alarming. She’s hardly taller than Rory, and very slight. She nudges a skull aside with her bare toes and approaches.

  “I want to see it properly.”

  Rory swallows. He remembers the moment the fox hesitated. If there’s any sort of opportunity here, he’s got to sound like he knows what he’s talking about.

  “You can’t just say it like that,” he says, standing up. “You’ve got to have respect. It’s from a god, like I said. One of his names is Destroyer. I spoke to him. Earlier on. He said he was . . .” Rory’s winging it. He can’t stop now. He tries to remember what the terrible god said, when he was at his most terrible. “He was In Violet.”

  Rose gives him a surprisingly withering look for such a young-looking woman. “What are you talking about?” But it’s all right, she’s not really listening to him. All she cares about is the crucifix. “Show me.”

  Silvia snatches it away, frowning. Rose bares her teeth and hisses.

  “All right.” Rory hurriedly gets between them. He takes Silvia’s hands and does what he did before, unpeeling the fingers one by one, saying “All right, all right” all the time, like he’s soothing a dog, and at the same time trying to think of the right thing to say to Rose. Silvia lets him take the statuette, though when her hands are empty she stares at the space where it used to be as if wondering what just happened. He turns and shows it to Rose. He’s got to try something, right now.

  “It came from—”

  “His mother,” Rose says, almost whispering. She touches the crucifix with a finger. She’s standing almost on top of Rory. She smells amazing, like a mixture of the human body with the sweetest food ever invented. “His mother, and their sister.” She looks up at Rory. Her eyes are full of wonder. “This is hers.”

  Anything he says is just going to break the spell. Not daring to breathe yet, he just nods, as if he knew that already, obviously.

  “Where did that woman get it?”

  “From a god. I told you.”

  “It’s another sign,” Rose says. She looks like she might be about to cry. Cry with joy, that is. “First Corbo and now this. And look at my blossoms. I flowered for him when he first came here, to welcome him to his proper place. He must be coming back. He must be. He’s coming home.” She smiles. It’s horrible, with her fangs, and yet somehow lovely too. “At last.”

  “Who is?”

  “The white hawk.” Her brown eyes are definitely moistening. “The hawk of May. The boy who belongs here and nowhere else. He promised he’d come back. Six hundred and thirteen days ago.” She scoops a handful of petals from the road, reaches up, and dribbles them over herself like pink snow. “As soon as I saw Corbo I thought it might be today.”

  Rory’s not quite sure what comes over him. By the time the words are out of his mouth it’s done, it’s too late to think about it.

  “Oh yeah,” he says. “Actually that’s me.”

  The loveliness vanishes in an instant from Rose’s face.

  “Hi,” he says. “Sorry. I should have said before. I’m back.”

  She stares at him like he’s mad.

  “So how’s everything been?” he says.

  She laughs, loud and long. While he’s waiting for her to finish Rory feels the red heat rising in his cheeks and thinks, Don’t back down now, whatever you do, and, Oh, shit. He grips the crucifix tight and sends an inarticulate prayer in the direction of the bad god.

  The laugh peters out. Is he imagining it, or is there something a teeny bit hesitant about the way it trickles into silence?

  “I’m not surprised you didn’t recognize me,” he says. “A lot of weird stuff has happened. Still.”

  She’s very, very close to him, staring at his face, smelling like heaven.

  “It’s nice to be back,” he says. “After, you know. Six hundred and whatever. All those days.”

  He thinks: If the next thing she does is anything other than kissing me dead with those teeth of hers, I’ve got a chance.

  “You’re barely a boy,” she says. “He was almost a man.”

  And that’s when he knows it really might work. He remembers what Phil the fox said about lying. Well, not exactly what it said, because he doesn’t have time to remember anything exactly: everything’s got a sort of downward momentum now, carrying itself along without time to stop, like Ol trotting down Briar Hill to his death. But he remembers the feel of it, the way the big fox became hesitant and confused. They don’t understand lying, he thinks to himself. They don’t know what it’s like.

  “Like I said,” he says. “Weird stuff. Going back in time and things. It changed me.”

  Rose leans closer, which is tricky since she’s almost standing on his toes anyway, and inspects his face as if checking for specks of dirt.

  “You’re nothing like,” she says. “You’re a completely different boy.”

  “Yeah, but you said, didn’t you, about how you can be different things at once. Like you being a girl and a flower.”

  “Plant.”

  “Plant, whatever. It’s the same thing. I’m me now, as well as that . . .” Has he remembered this wrong? “White hawk.”

  “You said you were Scottish.”

  “No, I said my name’s Scottish. Remember? Totally different thing.” What’s he doing? He’s babbling. He can feel his face going purple as a bruise and his breath coming short. Anyone with half a brain could tell he’s lying. He might as well have a big red light on top of his head flashing the word false. But Rose still hasn’t bitten his mouth off. “I should have explained right when I got here, shouldn’t I? Sorry. It’s just I’m a bit tired; it’s been a really long day. And, um.” He tries to do a casual-looking survey of the road, the hedge, the bones, the girl. “Everything’s so different,” he guesses.

  “Yes,” she says. Lucky guess. He fingers the crucifix gratefully. “It’s all changed since then.”

  “Me too.” Bad god, don’t give up on me now. “That’s why I look totally different, see. And younger. That explains it.”

  She doesn’t breathe like a normal person because if she did he’d be feeling it on his face, but he gets the impression she’s sniffing him.

  “There’s no magic on you,” she says. “Not a trace. You’re just a lost boy leading a dumb woman.”

  “The god took it all away.” He’s seeing pages from the comics flipping through his head. Curses, trials, origins, antidotes, powers lost and found. It’s as good a story as any. Well, maybe not, but it’s the first one that pops into his mouth and he doesn’t have time to pick and choose. “And made me look different. But I got this.” The crucifix was what started her off. He’s got to try to get her to pay attention to it instead of him. “So I could bring it back here. It was like a sort of quest. It was, actually. A quest. That’s what I was doing. Getting it. So I could, you know. Bring it. Back.” He swallows. “Inside.” She’s just staring again. “So you should. Um.” What he wanted to say was You should let me in now but his nerve’s finally failed.

  Very slowly, she raises a finger and touches his cheek. Her skin’s softer and colder than proper flesh.

  She jumps back.

  “Marina!” she says. “You found her!”

  You?

  “Yeah.” Rose is looking at him in obvious amazement, like he’s someone else entirely. Keep going, keep going. “I did.” Who the hell’s Marina? Where has he heard that name before? It doesn’t matter; he can’t stop now. “Just about,” he says, because Rose’s mouth is hanging half-open and he needs to make her start talking again. “It took a long time.”

  “Isn’t she coming back as well?”

  He shrugs airily. “Maybe. One day. It’s up
to her. Probably. She might have changed too, you know. So you’d better let her in too.” He puts as much emphasis as he dares on the word too.

  “You’re not the white hawk,” Rose says. “Why would you say you are when you aren’t?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe it, Rose.” He ought to sound like he’s known her for ages. “That’s why I didn’t say at first, actually. Didn’t want to give you a shock.”

  “But you’re not mad. You won your way to the gate fairly.”

  He’s trying to think of her like Pink: a younger girl, not too bright. She is pink, he tells himself. She’s a rose with pink flowers, petals soft as water. “I know it’s all a bit weird,” he says. “But it’s me. It really is.”

  He’s lying so hard he almost believes himself. How bizarre words are, he thinks. He’s just said really when it’s nothing of the sort, and yet saying it makes it sound a little bit more true.

  “Gawain,” Rose says.

  His heart leaps because what he hears her say is Go in. She said it a bit funny, but what else could she have been saying?

  “Thanks,” he says. No, that’s wrong, what would he be thanking her for if he owns this place anyway? “For waiting,” he adds. That’s stupid too, she’s a flower (plant!), what else was she going to do, stroll off to see the world? “For so long,” he finishes. “It must have been . . .” Lonely? Boring? Shut up, he tells himself. He turns to Silvia. “Come on,” he says to her. “In we go.”

  Silvia doesn’t answer, of course, so he takes her arms and starts tugging her to her feet.

  “I thought this day would be so joyful,” Rose says behind his back. “I thought we’d all be happy again. But it feels dry.”

  Silvia’s standing now. She makes a move to take the crucifix back but he dodges and steers her towards the gate instead. It’s not a gate at all, just a solid mass of thorny wood between two stone posts, and he has no idea how he’s supposed to get through, but he starts walking towards the hedge as confidently as he can.

  “It’ll be better soon,” he says to Rose. He doesn’t like seeing her so downcast.

  “Who’ll rejoice at your return if they don’t even know you? Maybe I ought to kill you after all.”

  “You can’t do that,” he says, tugging Silvia faster. There isn’t even a glimmer of light coming through the dark weave of clawed boughs. “Everything would go wrong if you did that. You’d be stuck waiting forever.”

  There’s a rattle behind him. Rose is reascending on top of her little mountain of the dead. She lays herself on her back over its summit, back and back until she’s lying with her arms and legs spread and her hips higher than everything else. Her dress has ridden right up and there’s a sort of pink flower between her legs, which makes Rory look away very fast, though not before he’s seen her arch herself with a weird gasping effort. As she moans the knotted branches at the base of the hedge between the gateposts begin to arch up too, as if an invisible hook’s tugging them away from the ground. A dark cavity opens beneath them. Rory doesn’t wait. He drops flat to his stomach. “Follow me,” he tells Silvia, and forces himself to crawl into the narrow space. It’s dusty and scratchy and thick with the smell of earth and the musty sugar of faded blooms. The thorns above him are quivering as if they might snap down at any second, but when he wriggles his head right in he can see that there’s light beyond. “We have to crawl,” he says. “Just do what I do. OK?” He presses himself flat to the ground, arms by his sides, and squirms his way through into the forbidden garden.

  IV

  Eden

  30

  Music.

  A summer night. It could even have been midsummer night, when the twilight feels like it goes on forever. Long past his bedtime anyway. The dusk was infinitely slow. He might have been trying to stay awake to see but it never got dark, just quieter and quieter, as if there was a single dimmer switch turning light and sound down together. Dad had taken Jake and Scarlet out for an evening sail. He was too young, they all agreed, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t wish he was anywhere else. No school next day, or next week, or even next month. Just enough breeze to move the edge of the curtains, and the stars in their holiday brilliance. The night made tiny noises outside, muffled crickets and finger-high waves.

  Downstairs, Mum put on a CD.

  He remembers it so clearly. He remembers what it was like to be warm, dry, clean, idle, at peace. All of that’s there in the memory of the music. He doesn’t know what it was. Something classical. It came up through the floorboards and around the partly open door of his bedroom. It was in the air. It was the air, the summer night air, endlessly tranquil, suspended forever on the edge of perfect stillness. He must have fallen asleep before it stopped playing but he doesn’t remember that. Can you remember falling asleep?

  The air here has that kind of music in it.

  He’s standing in waist-high grass. The grass is a little dry and just faintly yellow: thinking about the end of autumn. There’s a cottage nearby. It’s in two halves. The top floor’s all neat and quaint, thatched roof and lattice windows and a rambling plant with small fading leaves. The ground-floor windows are charred and shattered, there are bulges and cracks in the brickwork around them, and instead of a front door there’s a ruin of smashed wood. But the two halves go together even though they’re opposites, like the sad and happy parts of a story.

  Down the slope from the cottage are golden woods. To the side is a simple iron fence with a meadow beyond. There’s a car, a normal one, not pillaged or rusting. It’s parked beside the cottage as if someone lives there.

  The music’s all around. It’s a hum, almost soft enough for him to think he’s imagining it. It’s a tune he’s sure he remembers but can’t name. He feels like if he sat down in the grass and listened to it for the rest of his life he’d never be unhappy again.

  In front of the cottage there’s an odd statue. He can’t tell whether it’s actually carved out of a tree or just made to look like that. It’s a tree trunk which turns into a green woman with bright red eyes. At the end of her raised arms it turns back into a tree, long twisty branches. The woman bits are incredibly lifelike. Its green face is turned right towards where he and Silvia are standing. The eyes are blank, just red ovals.

  The wall of thorns has closed behind them.

  Rory brushes himself off. Silvia looks a bit bedraggled with earth and leaves all over her so he brushes her off too, shyly at first.

  All that business with Rose has driven his directions out of his head. He was supposed to ask someone what to do next, as far as he remembers, but he’s forgotten who. There’s no one here anyway.

  He has an overwhelming feeling that it doesn’t matter.

  He’s not hungry or tired anymore. Or rather he is but he doesn’t care. Hunger and tiredness are there inside him alongside relief and tranquility, peaceful neighbors, like the upstairs and downstairs halves of the cottage.

  He does remember the first thing the warty creature told him about the well: It’s in the deepest darkest part of the woods at Pendurra. Silvia’s staring blankly as ever down the slope towards the line of trees. A mossy track leads that way, past the cottage.

  “All right, then,” he says to her. “We might as well have a look.”

  The music stops. It’s as if he’s broken the spell by talking. He takes Silvia’s hand to show her she’s supposed to follow him. Out of nowhere a beautiful clear woman’s voice says:

  “Welcome, liar.”

  He looks around. There’s still no one there. For a weird moment he almost persuades himself that it was the statue which spoke.

  * * *

  If someone’s watching him they’re as invisible as the music. It’s probably God again, Rory thinks, as he leads Silvia down the track into the woods. This is the kind of place God would live in. Everything’s perfect. Not perfect like in tidied-up: there’s grass sprouting in the middle of the path, and drooping nettles and leathery dock and the big candelabra of dried-out hogwee
d at the edge of the wood, and the undergrowth is messy with rotting boughs. But still, everywhere he looks, it’s perfect. It’s like the difference between the photos in fancy calendars and the photos you take yourself. Even if they’re exactly the same place the calendar makes everything look gleaming and beautiful where your own picture ends up washed-out and sort of boring. There’s nothing about these woods that aren’t ordinary autumn woods, and yet it’s the most beautiful place he’s ever seen. It makes him go on tiptoes, like it’ll vanish if it realizes he’s there.

  Everything that’s happened to him in his life before now feels like a dream.

  It’s funny, because he can suddenly remember all of it. In fact it’s almost like he can’t stop remembering. He looks at the caked layers of fallen leaves and thinks of a time when his wellies got stuck in deep mud when he was little, and of foraging for mushrooms with Ol who bragged on and on about kissing Laurel, and of his mother turning a stick over and saying Look, a beetle! He looks at the curve of a bough and thinks of rough seas, and of the handle of a knife in his hand, and of Soph terrified and wanting him to kill her. He glances back to make sure Silvia’s still following and thinks of how far she’s walked across Europe, and then he’s thinking of maps in Geography, and then school, little humiliations, pointless triumphs. The smell of school lunch. The smell of when the toilets stopped working. The smell of Missus Stephenson dying. The whole world beyond this place buzzes around in the back of his head, a gargantuan anthill of biting crawling distresses.

  It occurs to him that he’s found what all those people were looking for. Everyone who came to the Valley, people like Silvia and Lino and Per, looking for the heart of magic. This is where they were trying to get. All left behind.

  He thinks it’s probably heaven.

  Beyond the woods is a garden. Actually the woods feel like a garden too, but this is a proper one, with borders of different flowers laid out with grass spaces between them, and small trees dotted around. On the far side of the garden is a house. It’s a big old higgledy-piggledy grey mansion, as big as the Abbey but heavier and wilder somehow, and all built of stone.