Arcadia

by James Treadwell

  Gawain and Silvia are suddenly both paying attention to him. Holly too, as far as he can tell.

  “At peace, I mean. Everyone was happy. That’s what she said. She said it was hidden away, no one knew this was a special place so it was sort of forgotten. She was talking about The Old Days. You know. Before magic and stuff.”

  Gawain studies Rory.

  “Do you remember,” he says, “when we spoke to my mother in the night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The last thing she said before she went. She said we ought to make what you call the old days come back again. Remember that?”

  “Is that what she meant?”

  Gawain nods. “One of the things she meant.”

  Silvia looks confused. “Your mother?”

  Rory doesn’t want to try explaining. “You mean go back to when magic was only here and no one else knew?”

  “I think so,” Gawain says. “Return the gift. Refuse it. That’s what she was talking about.”

  “You have this power?” Silvia says.

  “Yes,” says Gawain.

  “You can lose your gift? Like me?”

  “Hide it away,” Gawain says. “Like Rory just said. For hundreds of years magic lived on here when it was nowhere else. Some people must always have known, I suppose, but no one would have believed them anyway. We could do that again. Finish all our stories here. In this enchanted garden, hidden away from the rest of the world.”

  “And everyone inside happy,” Rory says, remembering Rose’s words.

  Gawain nods towards the cottage. “Like them. They don’t want to be anywhere else. They’re ready for grief too. God knows they’ve earned it. You’d all be all right here. You too, Rory. There’s no disease here, no one goes hungry, the house’ll always be fine. We could let everything go back to how it used to be.”

  “Except,” Corbo says.

  “Ah,” Holly sighs. “Except. One place sits empty at the homecoming.”

  “Yes,” Gawain says. “Except without Marina.”

  * * *

  They’re back in the hall that’s like a church, sitting around one end of the long table. There’s food in big heavy dishes, baked squash with honey, some kind of chewy yellowy bread which is incredibly delicious, pears, blackberries. No one’s eating much.

  “She didn’t belong here, Gav,” Iz says. She’s gone back to looking like she’ll never laugh again. She clasps her hands tightly together. “It’s not her place. She couldn’t manage it.”

  Gawain’s expression is the most miserable of the lot, which is saying something. Since they started talking about Marina it’s like winter has entered the house.

  “Couldn’t you have brought her home?” he says, so dully it’s hardly even a question. He already knows the answer. He’s given up.

  “I would have. I should have!” Iz reaches for Gawain’s hands, hesitates, holds back. “I didn’t understand about her until it was too late.”

  “So what happened to her?”

  Iz shakes her head. “I can’t say it. I can’t. Her mother took her in the end, that’s all that matters. She was all right then. Gav, I promise. They held each other like this.” Iz wraps her fingers around each other. “She went where she was supposed to be.”

  For a while now Rory’s had the feeling he’s got something he needs to tell them, but he doesn’t know when or how to say it. The adults are all ignoring him. They’re watching Gawain, nervously.

  “I always knew,” Gwen says. “We all did. It was always going to happen one day. We had this lovely fantasy, Tristram and I, that our lives would go on forever, but we were fooling ourselves. Year by year, the older she got, you could see more of her mother in her. She’s better as she is. Honestly, Gav dearest. She must be.”

  Rory remembers: Where I used to live there was a room which was wider and higher than your whole house.

  “I’m certain of it,” Iz says. “She’s safe in the sea. Completely safe.”

  Rory remembers: I want you to be safe with me. Where it’s always quiet.

  “I watched what happened to her mother,” Gwen says. “She loved Tristram more than I’ve ever known anyone love anyone, but she couldn’t stay with him. She had to go back. They’re not the same as us.”

  Them Them Them. I wonder why They hate us so much.

  Silvia’s angry. She doesn’t like the way Iz and Gwen are talking. “You think this boy is finished with his life?” She means Gawain. “Like you, like me? When he’s not even a man yet?” She turns to Gawain and speaks more gently. “I see your face when you think about her. You can’t just forget. I think what you want is to leave this place, go and look for this girl.”

  Iz is shaking her head. “She chose the sea, Silvia. She’s gone.”

  “You say this? You? Who sat in that chair in this room, a year, two years, waiting for him?”

  “This is Gav’s home,” Iz says quietly. “Marina went to hers.”

  “The thing is,” Gawain says, interrupting before Silvia can come up with an impatient response, “I made a promise.”

  Everyone looks at him.

  “To her, in fact. The day I left her. The hour. The minute. I was standing on the step outside the front door. I told her, the next time I entered Pendurra again I’d never leave.”

  “You left her alone?” says Silvia.

  “Try to imagine,” Gwen says. “This was the only place she’d ever seen. I mean ever. For thirteen years she’d never been out the gate. She couldn’t. How could anyone think of taking her away from here?”

  “A girl of thirteen? And you leave her by herself? In this house? It’s like a tomb for a child.”

  “Believe me,” Iz says, though Silvia’s shaking her head. “It would have been so much better for her if she’d stayed here.”

  “How can I break a promise?” Gawain says.

  “Does it matter so much?” Silvia’s unimpressed with everyone now.

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes, it does. I can feel it in my mouth. It’s the same with everything I say. I can feel how it needs to be true.”

  Gwen’s sitting next to him. Her hands aren’t much better than twisted claws, but she pats his arm. “I think you must have known what you were promising,” she says. “Even if you didn’t realize it at the time. You knew you’d have to let her go.”

  “It’s done, Gav,” Iz says. “She won’t come back. She tried the world and found out what it’s really like out there. She wouldn’t even talk to me at the end.”

  “Marina?” Gwen says. “Wouldn’t talk?”

  No one smiles. “A horrible thing happened to her,” Iz says. “She changed. She was so like her mother when she left me. She didn’t care at all. Like the sea.”

  Rory remembers: They hurt me inside and out, one after another.

  Gwen’s still holding Gawain’s arm, gently persuading. “Swanny loved Tristram like, I don’t know. Like her own life, you’d have thought. But you saw what she did to him in the end.”

  “Killed him,” Gawain says.

  “Took him to the sea.” Gwen’s not correcting, just finding another way of saying it. “They’re not like us, the mermaids. Even their love is merciless. I watched Swanny and Tristram try. Her mother and father. It was so awful. They wanted so much to find a way to be together but it’s the sea and the land, isn’t it? There’s no overlap. We thought Marina might grow up half and half but you can’t be half this and half that, not when they’re opposites.”

  Rory remembers: My father was a man. I never told you that, did I?

  Silvia sits back from the table. “He loves this girl,” she says, looking between Gwen and Iz. “I can see it in his face.”

  “There’s nothing he can do,” Gwen says, “even if he wanted to. No one could find her in the sea.”

  Gawain closes his eyes in pained resignation.

  “You’re here now, Gav love,” Iz says, nodding. “It’s all finished. You’ve reached your end and she reached hers. She’s all right now. T
hat’s the only thing that matters, isn’t it? She’s where she’s supposed to be. Like the rest of us.”

  There’s a long silence.

  Rory shifts in his seat. No one else is going to say it for him, so he might as well get it over with.

  “Actually.” He spins his plate on the table, trying not to notice that they’re all suddenly looking his way. “I think I might know where you can find her.”

  V

  Fall

  37

  If Rory’s honest with himself, he hasn’t thought that much about the future. You don’t, when you’re ten. If one of the others had asked him, he’d probably have said, Aren’t we all going to live here now? Like this? There’s a big house, safe, dry, at peace. There’s food, though he hasn’t seen exactly where it comes from; it’s magic, he supposes. None of these people are his family but he’s decided he likes Silvia as much as he’s ever liked anyone, and Gwen and her sister are a bit like the Nice women on Home except without getting tired or cross or smelling of fish. Anyway he saved Silvia’s life, all by himself, and his family’s all dead. So it wouldn’t have seemed very unlikely—if he’d let himself think about it—that they’d all just, whatever. Stay. Go on. And nothing else would happen. End of.

  It’s not going to be like that now.

  The really weird thing is that it’s his fault. Nobody made him speak up. He could have let them all forget about Her, like Gwen and Iz were saying they ought to. But no. And now everyone’s worried, everyone’s unhappy.

  He wonders whether this is why Holly’s started calling him serpent as well as liar. It’s not an insult, as far as he can tell, but it stings a bit all the same. He’s not sure he’s all that comfortable around Holly. Her eyes are like something out of the horror comics. He’s not too sure about Corbo either. Being stared at by Corbo makes him feel like food.

  It’s one of the reasons he’s decided he’s going to go with Gawain.

  Deciding who’s going and who isn’t is what’s causing all the unhappiness. It’s like being back in the Abbey. There must be something about the process of making decisions that makes people miserable, Rory thinks. Iz is the worst. She’s desperate for Gawain to change his mind and stay, but he’s not going to, so she’s torn between wanting to go with him and knowing she can’t face the outside world again, which given what Rory’s seen of it seems fair enough. Silvia’s torn as well, wanting to help but dreading the idea of going without her gift, not knowing what she’s doing. Only Gwen is certain she doesn’t want to leave Pendurra, but even she’s tormented with worry about parting from Gawain. It doesn’t help that Corbo keeps clacking around muttering the word unwise.

  Gawain’s made up his mind, but he knows he’s about to break his promise and he’s brooding over it. Rory finds this a bit peculiar, though he’s careful not to say so. Does it really matter what Gawain said to someone six hundred and something days ago? People promise things all the time when they don’t mean it. Whenever Pink says I swear, what she basically means is Actually I’m not going to do this and we both know it. In the first months after Dad and Jake and Scarlet sailed away his mother used to tuck him in every night promising they’d all be together again soon. The world’s made of lies, big and little, black and white. Perpetual truth would be like that god, too unbearably bright to live with.

  Though one of the names Holly greets Gawain with is oracle, so maybe he’s tried living like that. He’s got a look about him like he’s got too close to a fire and been burned by it, like Gwen except with all the burning on the inside.

  Rory’s got to go with him, anyway. Who else can show Gawain the exact cove at the far northern tip of Home where She always appears? And how could he let anyone sail to Home without going with them? Someone’s got to explain to Kate and everyone what’s been happening.

  There’s another reason too. It’s currently in his trousers. He turns it between his fingers sometimes when he’s got his hands in his pockets. If it’s really a magic ring—the magic ring—then isn’t Gawain going to need it?

  He’s already tried giving it back to Gawain, quietly, when it was just the two of them. The man just looked at him and asked whether he remembered what his mother had said. Flustered, Rory mumbled that he did, yes.

  “I think you’ll know what to do, then,” Gawain said, and that was it.

  He won’t, of course. He has no idea. He doesn’t understand the ring at all. He’s beginning to think Hester the Professor and Silvia were both right, and there’s actually no such thing, it’s just a hoax. Maybe that’s what Gawain means. The ring’s not for anything, it doesn’t do anything, they’re just supposed to get rid of it. Like those hobbits.

  He keeps it in his pockets anyway, though.

  So now they’re scrambling down through steep-sloping woods, just the two of them, Gawain barefoot as always. The undergrowth’s straggly and twisty and the ground’s slick with old leaves. They’ve said their farewells. Rory kept hoping until the very last minute that Silvia would change her mind and come with them, but she didn’t.

  “Promise you’ll return to me,” Iz said to Gawain, more than once. Her face when he couldn’t promise was terrible to see. Rory kept thinking of Molly sitting in the brown chair in the corner of the big room in the Abbey after Ol died, not saying a word, looking utterly destroyed.

  “So are we coming back here afterwards?” Rory asks, as they pause to get their footing, both holding the same contorted bough for balance.

  “I don’t know,” Gawain says. He sounds distraught. “I promised I’d never leave her, once. That was on the day her father died. Then it turned out I had to, so I promised I’d come back here and stay forever. That’s broken too. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

  Rory finds this surprisingly frightening.

  “Maybe we should,” he begins, after Gawain’s been staring at him for a while. He can’t finish, but he looks back up the slope.

  “No,” Gawain says. “I’ve got to try to find her.”

  He doesn’t sound like an oracle when he says that. He sounds like an unhappy boy, not quite a man yet after all.

  * * *

  The slope levels out, the ground becomes rock, and there’s the river.

  Within the enchanted confines of Pendurra, Rory’s stopped thinking about the outside world. He’s forgotten how bad it was. Here’s the truth of it, stretching upstream and down as far as the eye can see. The river’s a graveyard.

  He’d imagined the thorny rose encircling Pendurra like a castle wall. Now he sees there’s no need for it on this side. No one’s ever going to cross this moat. Plenty of people have tried, by the looks of it. Tried and died. The wrecks lie so thickly in the dull dark water you could almost use them as stepping-stones.

  To the right, downstream, the river widens, and there, where it meets the cursed sea, the smashed and sunken boats are at their most colossal, tankers and container vessels, some no more than looming peaks of rust, others still almost whole but overrun by the waves, smothered in kelp. To his left the wooded banks press closer together and the ruins are small boats, launches, yachts, gigs, dinghies. The yachts’ masts stick up at all angles, some of them trailing fouled canvas like collapsed tent poles. Mostly they’re crowded near the wilderness of purpling bramble on the opposite shore.

  There’s just one boat riding upright and sound. It’s at anchor near the rocks where Rory and Gawain have come down to the shore. It’s a single-masted sailing boat, scratched and battered. It was probably once mostly white but it’s turned the same grey as the river. The stern’s facing them. The name, painted in black capitals, is LOOKFAR.

  “Gwen’s idea,” Gawain says. “Marina loved that book. Mum says she had it with her when they met.”

  “What book?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You and Gwen really came all the way here in that?”

  “And Corbo.”

  “From America?”

  “Canada. Yes. Halfway round the world. It felt
like the whole way round.”

  “It should only take us a day to Scilly.” Rory looks at the sky. “What time is it? Is it still morning?” There are layers of low cloud, passing in slow motion. “Where’s the wind coming from?”

  “It’s always followed me before,” Gawain says. “Let’s hope it does today.”

  There’s a rigid inflatable pulled up in a shingle cove nearby. Rory gets in first and lets the man push them out into the river. As Gawain rows them out to the yacht Rory tries to read the inflatable’s name, stenciled on its side in letters faded almost to invisibility: SHENANIGANS, HARDY, B.C.

  “B.C.? Is that how old it is?”

  “British Columbia. Part of what used to be Canada.”

  “What is it now?”

  “Something else. Did you grow up in the Isles of Scilly?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  “And is it the same place now?”

  “Oh,” he says. “I see.”

  As they’re climbing aboard, Rory says, “Are we really going to make everything go back to how it was before?”

  Gawain offers Rory a hand over the rail. The boat sways and settles under them. The decking and the cabin are pale wood, scoured completely smooth.

  “You can’t undo what happened,” he says. “Nothing’s going to make the lights come back on, just like that.”

  “But no more magic? Isn’t that what your mother said?”

  “All I’m trying to do,” Gawain says, “is find a friend who never deserved to be abandoned.”

  “But I thought she told us—”

  “That’s all I’m trying to do,” Gawain says, this time with an emphasis on the I. Not for the first time, Rory’s left wondering what the man means, and by the time he’s got himself moving again Gawain’s already busy with something else, unknotting the cover from the boom.

  There’s no wind at all where they are, though out towards the mouth of the river a stand of tall evergreens is nodding as if in answer to a breeze. Gawain lets the ebbing tide take hold of the boat as he winds up the anchor. The creased and smeared sail hangs limp. Rory takes the tiller—he feels like someone ought to—but there’s no pressure on the rudder at all, he might as well not bother. They’re spinning in the current like a bath toy. Gawain isn’t concerned. He sits himself forward of the mast and watches as though it doesn’t matter at all that the waters ahead are clogged with giant slabs and reefs of wreckage.