Not forever, though.
The boy and the drowned thing were gone, or at least there was no torchlight and no other lights either. She found Jennifer by the soft gasping noises the girl made as she crouched in the street, though how she could hear anything over the yawning moan of the mask she didn’t know. She smelled the sea again, foam and kelp and salt. It no longer revolted her. She put the mask in Jennifer’s hands, or thought she did. It was too dark to know for sure.
Everything fell silent.
Then there was a single crack of thunder. Lightning splintered the dark, a white wound ripped from the zenith to the reflecting surface of the inlet. In its instant of shocking brilliance Goose saw a silhouette standing in front of her, upright: the girl with her head transformed. From the face of the mask came a cry as huge and fierce as the sky’s.
It began to rain. Not the kind of storm rain the thunder had briefly promised, but Pacific rain, a sweetly irresistible drenching, the kind that feels as if it could go on forever. Within moments it had made the town its instrument. Gutters dripped and spilled, skylights thrummed, every surface answered to the gentle percussion. The darkness had come alive. The blaze at its center wilted visibly as Goose turned to look. Its noise was swamped. Instead of a hard-edged, blood-colored divide between burning light and utter shadow, the town had become an equal sea of quiet music, streets and buildings and sidewalks and foliage and the handful of vehicles that hadn’t yet been pressed into evacuation service all whispering their different presences by the different ways they testified to the unseen rainfall. There were voices everywhere. Everything had found its mouth.
Séverine, said one of them, close to her, deep, strong, calm. Goose saw the masked face turned in her direction. Be on your way now.
“I don’t actually know where I go next,” she said.
Then follow me.
“Which one are you?” Though she knew, really. The voice was in front of her on the road. She recognized it, in a way. It was the thing that had been missing, the thing she’d been looking for. It was the voice that hadn’t been in the cell in the station, and hadn’t been in the reams and megabytes of Jennifer’s file, the voice that was absent from those places: the voice that knew the answers to crazy things, that had nothing to say to all the wrong questions. Jennifer’s other voice.
Song of the killer whale clan, it said, suddenly huge, surging. Speaking for the house that won’t be emptied. For the people who won’t run away. Who’s listening? It became a bellow like the aftermath of thunder; it echoed between the houses. Who’s going to live here? Who’s going to learn how to live in this house? It moved away. Goose followed as if magnetized. She couldn’t actually see where she was going, but it didn’t seem to matter. The voice was as good as a beacon. There’s roofs and hearths. Who hasn’t forgotten? Who’s not afraid? A set of headlights appeared in the near distance, coming into town along the main road. They swept over the small rise by the welcome to alice, b.c. sign and angled straight toward her, turning the rain white and opaque and lighting up the silhouette that marched in front. Goose saw the outline of Jennifer’s sweatshirt and pants, and on top of them the great swelling ridges and fins of the mask, all now completely alive. It moved as if swimming through the air, ducking, turning, while the body it rode swayed and spun. The fire ahead was already almost gone. A ruined house and its half-ruined neighbor glowed dully at their outer edges, no more than that. The headlights picked out a few other people. Some ducked away and disappeared when they saw what was coming, others stayed where they were, frozen, Goose supposed, by sheer disbelief, or perhaps standing still to listen. Between English words the mask sang in its own almost-dead language. Run away if you want to. Find somewhere else to go. Everything’s looking for its own house.
The song took over. If anything it was growing louder all the time. An angry note came into it. Where’s the ghost? Where’s the bad spirit? They were near what had been the heart of the blaze now. A motorcycle lay flat in the road, trapping a prone body by the legs; the body wasn’t moving. Someone shouted something and ran uphill out of the light. The approaching car stopped with an audible screech. Its engine cut out, restarted with a frantic roar, and it began to reverse away. Come out, the voice roared. Time to face the music, monster. You got no house here. You been turned away. The transformed girl came to a halt by the smoking shell. Goose halted too. The mask turned to face the glow and leaned forward as if snatching prey. Come out!
The song stopped, and for a few moments the only sound was the polyphony of rain. The headlights swerved away in a jerky arc and turned back out of town. Someone else beating a retreat.
“Goose?”
He was nearby but invisible. She looked toward where the hesitant voice had come from. In the diminishing firelight even the nearest corners and streets were entirely invisible. “Jonas?”
“That really you? Ohh, man—”
The whispered exchange went no farther. Something moved among the embers and silenced them both.
The house had burned down to its timber frame, most of which was now piled in a charred and formless heap that sheltered the last of the fire. One of the upright black beams stirred and began to walk. Ash and sparks marked its passage. The pile settled, flaring, and the straight black thing became a body rather than a piece of the wreckage, going on stumbling black-booted feet. Two undimmed coals were housed in its head. It waded across the sputtering fire, and Goose saw how the scrawny white flesh had blistered, livid with burns and then blackened over with soot. Its waist-length hair smoldered with live sparks. Its clothes were frayed to shreds and its hands had curled into charred talons. The left one was hooked over the ring, whose soft gloss was undamaged and held the light.
Goose heard Jonas say, “What the fuck,” and then the pop of a holster and the unmistakable click and slide of his pistol.
“Don’t,” she said, in the same instant that Jonas fired. The demon staggered. Its right arm twitched and went slack below the elbow. Still it came forward. The pistol clicked again.
“Don’t!” Goose repeated. “Leave it to Jennifer.”
“That’s Jennifer?”
“Watch.”
The demon shambled through a disintegrated doorway and on to the scorched ground of the yard. The soles of its boots had almost burned away. They flapped in the sodden ash like broken wings.
“So you found her after all,” Jonas said quietly, from wherever he was standing. “Had a feeling you would.”
“Mountie always gets her man.”
“You did good, Goose.”
The walking corpse lifted what had once been its left hand. The firelight was fading visibly: the motion was little more than a stirring of different textures of black. Any semblance of air had gone out of its voice. When it spoke it sounded like dead leaves, or a stiff broom sweeping through ashes.
“Silence,” it hissed.
The mask swung its huge blunt prow upward and bellowed.
“We.” The demon’s mouth had roasted dry, and it could only make one word at a time. “Banish. You.”
No. Jennifer began to dance again, just a clumsy-looking shuffle below the waist, and yet it gave the mask a restless energetic motion. No, you don’t. Got no power to make me leave my own house.
“This,” the demon croaked. The ring in its ruined fist gleamed. “Is. Power.”
Open door, sang the mask. Letting things come home. Magic don’t belong to you. Only thing here out of its place is you, monster. This is where I live. I know the song to sing away bad spirits. You ready to hear it?
There must have been another bystander, at least one other, hidden in the night nearby, because an incongruously cheerful voice shouted, “Yeah!”
You listening?
The same voice whooped, like someone in a hockey crowd watching the start of a fight.
Goose felt the mask turn her way and spea
k suddenly quietly, closely. Song’s gonna send you on your way too. Got any good-byes to say?
“Bye, Jonas,” she said.
“This is it?”
“Yup.”
“Man.” Ma-aan. “I wish it wasn’t.”
The mask had begun to chant. The girl’s apologetic shuffle gained momentum. Her feet began to drum on the road with the rain.
“Too late for that. Look after Jennifer.”
“Check. Bye, Goose. Hey, what was your real name? I forgot.”
“Me too.”
“Goose, then. Fly north. Summer’s coming.”
Jonas was somewhere at her back. She was starting to jog. She settled into the steady motion, relieved. She remembered how running obliterated everything else. Head steady, barely looking, just the pure feeling of going. The song gave her feet a wonderfully easy rhythm.
She glanced behind. The demon had fallen. Over its collapsed body a slender figure knelt: the boy, she saw, the barefoot boy, death’s companion. She wondered whether he’d knelt over another fallen body once, out on a deserted island in the middle of the Inside Passage, and whispered words to help send her on her way. Something made his eyes sparkle in the light of the embers. He put his hand out to the burned claw and very gently eased the ring away. After he’d taken it he left his hand there, holding the scarred flesh in a surprisingly tender gesture. He stayed like that, kneeling, holding hands. She looked away again and faced up the dark road. For a few strides it felt as if there was something she might have said to him, but then it (and he, and everything) was gone.
33
Running without effort, without pain, up through a wet, deep, invisible forest.
There was only one road. It went up away from light and habitation. The rain softened to a kind of mist, halfway between something and nothing. She rose with the road, running smoothly, lightly, as if she shared the mist’s immunity to the pull of the earth.
At the top of the pass she came to a golden grove.
A light so beautiful it felt like you could drink it glowed among broad-leaved trees. She slowed. The trees were oaks and the light was like reflected sunrise, though it was long before dawn and there were no stands of oak among the birches and evergreens along the Hardy road. When she looked for the source that made this island of gold-green radiance in the otherwise infinite night, it seemed that the place was its own illumination, a glow-in-the-dark forest preserving the mellow warmth of an absent sun. The road led into it. She went under boughs sprouting with acorns. Everything was dry, though she heard the sound of running water ahead.
A golden man stood in the grove and watched her go by. Slung over his back was a quiver of arrows, which were plague, and in his hand was a bow. He smiled at her as beautifully as the light and opened his mouth, which was prophecy, though he said nothing. Walking now, she went on toward the water.
A wide, shallow stream marked the edge of the grove. It ran dark. The road continued under the black waters and then emerged on the far side, where it went over the pass and was dark too.
On the distant shore stood a woman no longer young but not yet old, with a long, rather anxious face and an air of waiting not very optimistically for something no one was ever going to give her.
There was no particular margin where the road disappeared into the stream, just still dry ground as far as the edge, and then the opposite. When she reached that edge she stopped, wondering whether she’d gone far enough now and should turn around and head back down the hill to town.
“Is someone there?” the other woman called. She peered across the stream. “Has someone come?”
“Hey,” Goose said.
“Marina?” the woman called doubtfully. “Is that you? Don’t cross if that’s you.”
Goose thought about a small voice speaking to her from somewhere very far away, too far to know. She turned to look back at the golden man as if for confirmation. He watched her, still smiling.
“Speak to me,” the other woman said, leaning across the stream as far as she dared. “If you’re there. Please.”
Goose heard inward echoes of a name. Marina. She remembered a child calling in tentative desperation. Where’s Gwen? Can I talk to her again?
“You must be Gwen,” she said.
The other woman twitched in surprise. A look of confused hope appeared in her face. “Yes,” she called. “Yes! I must be.” She stepped hesitantly forward into the stream. “Who’s there? Did Marina send you?”
Goose hesitated for a moment. The golden man spoke behind her: “Marie-Archange Séverine Gaucelin-Maculloch.” His voice was if anything more exquisite than his smile. It made her name a poem. While the poem lasted she remembered many things, so many that she thought they must in fact be all the things she had to remember, and all of them, even the embarrassing or frightening ones, now bathed in the marvelous light of the grove.
“I guess she tried to,” she called back. “We got cut off.” The other woman splashed awkwardly in shallow water, the flow eddying around her boots. Goose had remembered the boots too, and the black skirt, and the black leather jacket with a silvery pattern sewn into it.
The poem finished. She saw the woman struggling to cross and stepped in.
They met somewhere near the middle. Gwen clasped her and held on for a long moment.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Ah. It’s nothing.”
She looked toward the grove. “I can see light there. Is that the road?”
“Yep. You just follow it all the way. Can’t go wrong.”
“Bless you.”
“Not a problem,” the other woman said. The golden glow was fading behind her. She sped up again, carefully at first, with the water lapping around her, and then more steadily once she’d crossed. The road went over the pass and began its descent. Downhill was easy. Downhill was irresistible. She ran as easy as water, easy as air, weightless, senseless, running, running, on down into the dark.
James Treadwell was born, brought up, and educated within a mile of the Thames, and has spent much of his life further reducing the distance between himself and the river. He studied and taught for more than a decade near the crossing at Folly Bridge, Oxford, and now lives within sight of the Tideway in West London.
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ISBN 978-1-4516-6169-9 (ebook)
Anarchy Page 49