“And because you’re still trying to be a man,” Marina says, “I rule you.” She folds her naked arms as if suddenly uncomfortable.
“We would be ruled. We are obedient.”
She shakes her head, brief and awkward, almost pained. “That’s just wanting to be master, but upside down. I know what men do.” She points at the phantom with her left hand, the one wearing the ring. “You’re free,” she says. “Die.”
She puts the staff down and steps on it. Just lightly, not stamping or anything like that, but the staff cracks like glass and snaps in half. The phantom frays into a thousand tongues of flame, its old man’s face surviving only long enough to close its old man’s eyes before it’s not any kind of shape at all, just windblown leaves of transparent fire, then sparks splintering from the leaves, then nothing at all. One piece of the broken staff rolls slowly across the causeway and drops off the edge, bouncing down to join the plastic and polystyrene and flotsam snagged on mats of kelp.
Marina looks different. She’s not glowing as brightly. Rory looks over his shoulder and sees that the volcanic inferno on the Mount has faded to embers. A massive pall of smoke stretches away over the sea.
Gav and Marina are looking at each other. Neither’s moved for a bit. Rory’s suddenly embarrassed to be right there with them. He looks away shorewards. More Riders are milling around by the sea wall, some steering their horses carefully onto the beach. Soph sees him looking and waves. He’s too shy to wave back.
“Is it all right for me to touch you?” Gav says.
Marina’s arms are still tightly crossed over her chest. She doesn’t answer, so Gav steps towards her, carefully, the way you’d approach a wild animal. He’s a lot taller than her. He opens his arms and wraps her up in them, resting his chin on top of her head. He closes his eyes, as if he’s thinking, That’s it. Finished. A moment or two later and she closes her eyes as well.
Rory’s mounting discomfort at having to witness this scene is relieved by an unexpected voice.
“Gavin?”
Among the horses now approaching along the causeway is an extremely incongruous pony, shaggy and stumpy and almost as wide as it is tall. On its oversized saddle is a person thickly swathed in coat and cape and scarf and a woolly hat. This is the person who’s just called out, judging by the way she’s urging the pony forward.
“Gawain,” Marina corrects under her breath, without opening her eyes. Her cheek is smushed against Gav’s chest.
“You’re not going to drown me, then?” Gav says, almost as quietly.
“No,” she says. “Never.”
“Gavin!”
Rory recognizes the Rider on the pony now, which is quite an achievement given the way she’s bundled up. Something about her voice, perhaps. It’s Hester, the Professor, transplanted from wheelchair to horseback. A few of the others are approaching with her. Rory’s very pleased to see Ellie and Soph among them. “Gavin!”
Either Gav’s unwilling to move his head from where it’s resting, or he just can’t. He hasn’t answered.
“Gawain,” Marina corrects again, slightly irritably. “Things should have their right names.”
“I’ll tell her,” he says. “But maybe not now.”
The Riders come clopping up. They rein in at a respectful distance. Hester pushes back the hood of her waterproof cape and pulls off her hat. Rory thinks he’s never seen quite such a load of mingled astonishment and joy on any face, ever.
“Hey, kid,” Soph says, and winks at him.
“Hi,” he says. No one else is talking. It’s getting rather awkward.
“Who are your friends?”
“Oh. Um.” Gav and Marina are still folded together, white flesh and wet clothes, as if the rest of the world has stopped happening. “This is . . .” It feels funny to call her by a girl’s name, but things should have their right names now, apparently. “Marina. And—”
“Gawain,” Gawain says, without turning his head. “Hello, Hester Lightfoot. Good to see you again.”
Ellie cocks an eyebrow, looks at Hester, and says, “ ‘Again’?”
Gawain detaches himself from Marina at last. All the Riders are looking at her. “We’ve got something that belongs to you.”
“Marina,” Hester says. There’s a kind of big handle at the front of her saddle. She holds it and pulls herself forward. “The Marina you once told me about? Marina Uren?”
“Yes.” Gawain picks up the blunt-snouted dog mask from where it’s lying near Rory’s feet.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Uren,” Hester says, solemnly polite. “I’m not quite certain what we owe you, but our thanks will do for a start.”
Marina looks almost surprised. She faces the Riders. If she were an ordinary person she’d still be a child, not quite a woman yet, and she’s naked and pale and surrounded by horseflesh and clothes and armor and sweat, but in a way Rory can’t put his finger on she’s bigger than all of them put together.
“Too right,” Soph says, and eases herself off her horse. One of her feet is wrapped in thick padding instead of a boot, but she dismounts, though awkwardly and with a wince of pain. It’s a gesture of respect. One by one all the other Riders follow suit, except Hester, who can’t. Gawain hands her the mask.
“I left this in your house before,” he says. “But I guess you never got it.”
“Gav,” she says, and takes him instead of the mask, pulling him by the arm and almost falling off the pony as she topples into a clumsy hug.
“No one wants that.” This is Sal, wearing her red headscarf. She’s stepped forward to help keep Hester upright. “I vote we take it to the Mount right now and burn it.”
“No,” Marina says. Everyone’s instantly listening. It’s that sound in her voice, water humming. “There’s nothing wrong with it. He was the bad one, not the mask. It’s only ever people who do evil.”
“Can’t argue with that,” says Ellie. Her face is lined everywhere with fading scars.
“How many of our men have you killed, then?” says a woman farther back. It’s Jody. Rory wouldn’t have recognized her until she spoke. She’s picked up a bad wound across her cheek and eye. Some of the women around her glare at her. Hester lets go of Gawain.
“There’s suffering,” Marina says. “And injustice. I know about them. They’re different from evil.”
“We’ve just killed a man ourselves,” Hester says, meaning the words for Jody though she doesn’t face her. She takes the mask from Gawain. “Thank you. It’s so very good see you again.”
“Perhaps,” Marina says, looking at the ring on her finger, “it’ll get easier to understand the difference. Now that the truth’s out.” She exchanges a quick look with Gawain. “Part of getting the names right.”
“We’re not letting it go again, then?” Gawain asks her. He means the ring. “We’re not going back to the way things were?”
“No,” she says. She curls her left hand into a fist. “No more forgetting.” She holds her other hand out towards Gawain, palm up, like she’s inviting him to dance. “I was happy when I was little but I didn’t know who I was. And I’ve been happy in the sea, but I couldn’t forget who I used to be. We’re not going back to that.”
Gawain hesitates, as if he’s trying to make up his mind about something. Everyone’s watching very quietly now. He puts his hand in hers.
“So you’re not going back to the sea either?” he says.
“No,” she says. “I want to go with you.”
“Good,” he says.
“Always.”
“All right.”
“This is supposed to be your gift,” she says, reaching out her other hand, the one wearing the ring. He takes hold of that one too, so now it looks like he’s about to swing her around like she’s a delighted child. “But it’ll be better if I keep it. We’re the same anyway. Born across a divide.”
“OK,” he says. “Thank you.”
There’s a long silence. He doesn’t swing her around. They
don’t start dancing. They just look at each other, like a pair of mirrors, reflecting each other over and over and over.
“I feel like someone ought to kiss someone,” Soph says.
Ellie’s closest to her. She aims a kick. “They’re children!”
Soph shrugs. “I’d had my first kiss by the time I was that age. Hey, Rory. C’mere.”
He blushes with happy embarrassment. “C’mere,” she says again, waving him to her. “Lifesaver.” A moment later he’s wrapped in a rank hug, his face squashed against the scales of her tunic. She smells of sweat, fish, and horse, but he’s in no hurry at all to pull away. A moment later and Ellie’s hugging him too, and then it’s like a spell’s been broken and all the Riders are talking, laughing, pushing past each other and their stamping mounts to come and pat him or each other on the back.
Hester clears her throat. “Miss Uren?”
Gawain and Marina still haven’t moved.
“And Gavin?” Hester adds. The happy commotion around Rory settles again to listen. “Perhaps you’d honor us with your company at Dolphin House?”
At least a couple of the Riders stiffen.
“I, for one,” Hester says, in that measured way of hers, as though she’s working out a problem in her head, “have already spent more than enough of my life being frightened of what I didn’t understand. I suspect we’d all do better if we welcomed it instead. Will you join us, Marina? At least for a day?”
Gawain leans close to Marina and whispers something Rory can’t hear. Whatever it is, it makes her smile.
“All right,” she says, and then, for all the world like a nicely brought-up girl remembering her manners, “Thank you.”
“And you, Rory, of course,” Hester says. “You’ll come with us too, I hope. We’ve all got some catching up to do.”
“Of course Rory’s coming,” Ellie says. “Or I’ll kill him.”
“Can we at least get that girl some clothes?” Soph says. “If she shows up at Dolphin like that the boys’ll go fucking ape.”
39
There you are.”
Even on land he can’t see her coming, then. He’d thought he was all by himself. He’s been feeling a bit left out, to be honest, or perhaps it’s just that he’s not used to so many people all crowding round the fire, talking and singing and falling over each other, or perhaps it’s just that they’re all old friends and he hardly knows anyone. For whatever reason, he’s slipped away from the party and taken himself off to sit in the shadows behind an old barn, to look at moonlit clouds through the silhouettes of the trees and think about all the people he’s lost.
“You’re sad,” she says, sitting down beside him. They’ve given her a grown-up-sized coat with a wide hood. Her legs stick out of it below the knees. They catch a little moonlight, like boughs of silver birch. She has the hood up even though it’s dry and long after dark.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“I was just thinking about my mum and dad. And brother and sister.”
“Do you want to go home after this?”
“Dunno.”
“You can if you want. The sea isn’t angry anymore. It’ll never be kind to people, but things won’t be like they have been. My mother can see I’m all right now.”
“You’re going to stop killing everyone?”
“I wish you weren’t angry with me.”
“I’m not.”
“I’ve been looking for you all evening. I’d like to have sat down and talked to you but you were avoiding me.”
“Just been busy.”
“Rory?”
“What.”
“Why did you come and talk to me all those times? Before? On Tresco?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“All the others hated us. Why didn’t you?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Even here. With these people. Lots of them look at me and you can tell they’re looking at something different from them. You know what I mean. I’m something they’d rather not be seeing, or they don’t want to think about. You never looked at me like that. Not even after your friend drowned. You just liked talking.”
He has an obscure sensation of being told off.
“And listening,” she adds.
He shrugs. “It was nice.”
She waits awhile, and then changes tack. She pushes her left hand out of the coat’s oversized sleeve. “You know,” she says, “it was actually you who gave me this, when you think about it.”
“The ring?” He can hardly see it in the shadows. It only stands out because her hand’s so white.
“Yes. It went from your hand to mine.”
“I didn’t know. I had no idea you were there.”
“You just threw it away, then.” This time she presses him when he doesn’t answer. “Didn’t you.”
“I suppose.”
“There are people in the world who’d do the worst things you can think of to get their hands on this ring. Lots of people. Why did you throw it in the sea, Rory?”
Because Gawain told me to. But he didn’t. He almost did, but he didn’t. Rory’s not actually sure if he had a reason. If he was thinking of anything at the time, it was Lino with his funny accent saying ’Obbits!
“’Cause I thought no one should have it. We were supposed to get rid of it. We’re better off without.”
“Without magic?”
“Yeah. I suppose.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“Dunno.”
“But you’re not afraid of magic, Rory. Most people are. Almost everyone, I think. But not you. You were never afraid of me.”
“I’m not,” he says. “But it’s not just me. What about everyone else? When we spoke to Gawain’s mum she said everyone’s better off in a world without gods and that.”
“And you think that’s right?”
He doesn’t know. He’s too little to think about what’s best for the whole world. He’s only ten, for goodness’s sake.
“Without this,” Marina says, turning the ring in the moonlight, “I’m not my mother’s child as well as my father’s. Without it I’m one or the other, like I was before. I was a girl, and then a horrible thing happened and I found out I wasn’t just a girl, so I became my mother’s daughter.”
“Oh,” he says.
Fiery ghosts, arrowing over the sea, coming for some kind of reckoning.
“But now I’m going to be both. Now and always. And the world can be both too.”
The fire’s big enough now to carry sparks right over the barn roof. The two of them watch a handful of short-lived stars flow up among the trees.
“So mostly what I wanted to say was thank you,” she says. “Since you gave me this. Even if you didn’t mean to.”
“That’s all right.”
“Everyone here wants to thank you, don’t they. I’ve been noticing. Those women say you were incredibly brave. When you tried to rescue them from the dog men. You’re a bit of a hero.”
He’s actually delighted by this, but snorts aloud as if he thinks it’s ridiculous.
“And you’re not afraid of the world’s magic.” Marina stands up. “There are quite a few children running around here,” she says. “Lots of them must be young enough they’ve forgotten what it was like before. I wonder if they’ll grow up to be like you.”
“Marina?”
She was walking away, but she stops. It’s still funny that she has a name, a normal name, like a normal girl.
“Yes?”
Rory watches a single spark go up, up, and then out. “When that god spoke to me?”
She waits a moment and then repeats, “Yes?”
“He told me what gods were. He said it was things like death and love and whatever, stuff like that. Stuff you can’t do anything about.”
“Yes?” She can tell he’s trying to finish a thought.
“So really, how can you not have gods? If that’s right?
How could you have a world without them? I mean, that’s all ordinary stuff. The sun. He said the sun was a god. What’s the point of thinking we’re better off without that? What’s the point of hoping to live without the sun?”
She plops back down on the crumbling step by the barn door, pushes back her hood, and kisses him on the cheek. It’s the single best thing that’s ever happened to him.
40
Rory wakes up the next morning possessed of the certain knowledge that it’s time to go home.
A lot of decisions have been made in the night. Maybe it was in the air. Gawain and Marina are gone already. Hester’s gone with them. Word gets around so quickly that they’re all talking about it in the camp by the time Rory struggles awake. Hester at least has left a message, though apparently all it says is that she wishes them well. Rory knows where they’re all headed, of course, but he doesn’t say anything. If they’ve chosen to go quietly, he thinks, let them go. He wonders whether the well water can fix Hester’s legs so she’ll be able to walk again.
He’s not upset they didn’t wake him up to ask if he wanted to go with them, because he knows he’s going in the other direction, west instead of east. Still, he’s pleased to find a scrap of paper in the pocket of his trousers as he’s pulling them on. It’s been a long time since he’s seen small writing and for a second or two all he’s looking at is pointy loops and lines, like runes, as if someone’s planted a spell on him. Then as if by magic it swims into order and becomes a message.
You know where to find me again. See you there one day. Love, Marina.
He rolls the scrap carefully and tucks it in the inside pocket of his coat.
There’s an awful lot of talking going on outside. It’s the way they do things at Dolphin House. Hester wasn’t in charge—no one was, not really—but at least the rest of them tended to stop and listen when she had something to say. Without her all the conversations are happening simultaneously. He manages to get someone to give him something to eat, and he gets a turn with the warm water shower they’ve rigged up in an old greenhouse, but it’s a while before he can find someone he knows properly and tell them what he wants to do.
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