by Paul Cornell
“Hello hello!” he’d boomed yesterday night. “Here comes trouble.”
Which would normally have been the sort of greeting she loved. But not from him. And especially not after the day she’d had. She’d nodded to him, she remembered, and ordered a pint of 6B. It would have been impossible, in the circumstances, not to talk to him, but the last thing she’d wanted to talk about was what had happened with Judith and the guilt and anger that were wrestling within her. He’d tried the normal, harmless, topics, such as football and the weather, and she’d nodded along, barely listening to his replies. With anyone else, on any other day, she would gleefully have raised the subject of the weirdness of her work at the magic shop. She liked to present what she did, at least the public part of it, to her pub friends in all its eccentricity and have them tease her about it. But she couldn’t do that with Jenker. She wouldn’t make herself sociably vulnerable to him.
After a couple of drinks, however, she’d taken something he said for a starting point for a conversation that swiftly turned into come on, did he feel okay with how things were now, when you couldn’t say anything on Twitter without some fascist, some, I mean, literal fascist, someone who if you asked “are there any fascists here?” would put up his hand and say “actually . . .”? It had turned out Jenker wasn’t on Twitter, and thought people who paid too much attention to the Internet were a bit . . . he’d made big boggly eyes at her.
Where had it gone from there? Oh God, she was starting to remember. Shaun the police officer was actually quite good at this interviewing thing, wasn’t he?
After three drinks, one of which Jenker had bought her, and she’d suddenly started to wonder if he thought she was coming on to him, but no, that moment had gone past without comment, they’d started to seriously argue about what Brexit was going to mean to the economic future of Britain. He kept cutting her off and saying “nah,” while making points she found she didn’t have the information to hand to come back about. If you were a “crap farmer, not a good farmer,” you had reason to vote to stay in, he said, but fishermen had a good reason to vote out. Then Autumn said what about wanting to keep all the brown people out, and he’d said it wasn’t about the brown people, he was mates with a lot of brown people, like her, no offence, it was the bloody Poles and the whatever they were from central Europe, who couldn’t speak English, taking their jobs, bringing their own shops over here and their foreign muck into our supermarkets. If she thought it was about brown people, that was where the chip on her shoulder had come from. No offence. Here, Autumn had been on steadier ground, at least in terms of data, and she’d held her own, and had actually said out loud that she felt she was one of those people too. Every sort of those people. He’d said, what you? You’ve been here longer than I have! He’d started holding up a finger for his interruptions, and had said they should have another pint and blimey love, you can talk, can’t you, you and me must have been separated at birth, maybe I had a touch of the tar brush too, ’cos you’re not full on, are you, you’re half and half, so I don’t see what you’ve got to worry about, and she’d been about to . . . explode? Yeah, hopefully she’d been about to do that rather than force a laugh, when one of the many, many people who had somehow filled the pub around them, some of whom were now looking on in glee or embarrassment, had spoken up.
Oh. Oh my God. She remembered now.
This was him. She remembered his face. An old lad, in his seventies, newspaper under his arm. A ruddy, drinker’s face, balding, a fleck of grey stubble on his chin. He was so important. Why was he so important? What had happened to him?
“There . . . wasn’t really any trouble,” she said to Shaun. “Bit of a row.”
“Do you remember anyone in particular being there?”
She mentioned Jenker. But okay, Shaun probably had in mind this . . . weirdly important guy she’d just remembered. “Someone told me his name was . . . Old Rory?”
“Rory Holt.” That seemed to be the box he’d been wondering if she was going to tick. “Did he say anything in particular to you?”
Yeah. Yeah, he had, now Shaun had made her think of it. And it had been a terrible thing. It would have appeared in her memory, sometime today. It would have popped up, to bring her crashing down. Like it had halted her in her tracks now.
She could see him in her mind’s eye now, a little grin on his face as he’d said it. “Bloody good idea.” That’s what he’d said.
“What is?” she’d replied.
“A wall,” he’d said. “Trump’s got it right. We should build one too. Keep ’em all out.”
Which had gotten laughs, because come on this was still Britain, and nobody, whatever their politics, flew a flag for the most ridiculous American of them all, and that had come out of bloody nowhere. But it had left Autumn speechless. It had been a one-two punch with the awkward anger at what Jenker had just said.
She had stared at the old man. He’d met her gaze, challenging her. He hadn’t looked away. His gaze said, What the hell are you doing here in my sight? Did you think we were equal? This is my home. Not yours.
Jenker had tapped her on the shoulder. “Old Rory’s been reading the Internet too much,” he’d said, and made the boggly eyes again. “Do you want another?”
Was that how furious the look on her face had been, that he’d felt he’d needed to distract her?
What had happened next? She remembered leaving the pub . . . didn’t she? Had that been soon after? Had she had that next drink and lost track? Had she lost track of Rory Holt too?
“What happened next?” asked Shaun.
“I . . . I really don’t know. Could you tell me why you’re asking me all this?”
Shaun pursed his lips.
* * *
Like a lot of elderly people, Judith Mawson didn’t need much sleep, and thus tended to get up early. She would put the television on in her kitchen and watch something stupid before the news as she made a very early breakfast, these days usually consisting of whatever half-arsed cereal the doctor said she needed to force down for the sake of her . . . heart, usually, but pick any organ. Like they said, eating healthy food might not help you live longer, but it certainly made you feel like you were. In the last six months or so, as she went through her usual ritual, she’d find herself glancing at the stairs, always thinking she’d heard a voice, when actually she hadn’t.
“Stupid,” she whispered to herself. “Soft.”
Judith had got used to living with the spiteful ghost of Arthur, her husband, or rather, a curse that had taken his shape. The spectre might have been evil and cruel, but at least he’d been company. She was still trying to find a way to deal with the lack of another presence in the house, and thus, for the first time, having to completely accept that the real Arthur was gone. It was a strange, attenuated sort of grieving, made worse by Judith only having two people she could talk about it with: her apprentices, Autumn and Lizzie. Well, make that one person, after yesterday. The thought of it made her stop, with the cereal packet in mid-air. She had to take a moment to control her anger, as she had so many times before finally getting to sleep last night. Of course that stupid girl had wanted her to stay on at the shop, she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to say the words. And that wasn’t bloody good enough. Before she set foot in that place again, before she let Autumn resume her training, she would want, at the very least, an apology. And more money. And . . . whatever bloody else that stupid, stupid—!
Judith stopped herself. Her doctor probably wouldn’t approve of her getting so worked up, and what for? It had only been the sort of thing young folk did, with their emotions flooding all over the place like spilt milk. She’d lost sleep about it, but so what? She wouldn’t go in today, get an afternoon nap, let the stupid girl come to her.
For the umpteenth time, she put that matter to the back of her mind. What was worrying her more right now was this note she’d found attached to her fridge by a magnet. It made no sense. The note said:
; Remember that your parents are dead, you great fool.
Which was ridiculous, because Judith’s parents still lived next door like they’d always done. Only . . . no, that wasn’t true, was it? She clicked her tongue, annoyed with herself. That was her getting old. Joyce who had that horrible laugh lived there now, with her parakeet. So . . . Judith’s parents must have moved out, but . . . they’d have told her where they were going, wouldn’t they?
They must have moved out.
Where?
This bloody note, making no sense. Nothing of magic about it, either. It hadn’t just appeared. Someone had, quite normally, written it and put it there.
The weirdest thing about the note was, it was in Judith’s own handwriting.
* * *
The Reverend Lizzie Blackmore groaned, and threw out a hand to hit her clock radio. It was only when her hand had connected three times to the button atop the radio, and she had only succeeded in switching it on, and it had filled the room with the soothing really very early morning sounds of BBC Radio 2, that she realised it was not actually 6:30 a.m., but a whole hour earlier. She switched it off, and then realised what had actually awoken her. The sound of distant music was wafting through her open window. Duff, duff, duff, dance music, so far away you could only hear the beat, then the beat changing, then back to the previous beat. She got up, stumbled to the window, and closed it. That wouldn’t be uncomfortable. The Vicarage was cool in summer, if bloody freezing in winter. But she could still hear the beat, like a distant tapping. It was locked into her consciousness, specific and now just at the volume that made your ears listen out for it. Had it stopped? No, there it was. Had it stopped now? Nope.
She went back to bed and listened for about ten minutes to the changing beat, without wanting to. If it would only stay the same for a minute or two, she could have fallen asleep to it. She really didn’t feel much like bloody dancing. Finally, she got up, put on her dressing gown, and grabbed from her bedside table the item which was now ruling her life. She’d gotten the Exercise Tracker for herself as a New Year’s present, following that rather traumatic Christmas. The little electronic sadist was already making a bit of a difference to the size of her arse. Then she headed for the stairs, intending to make a cup of tea. She could spend this extra hour sending out a few emails, getting ahead of the day’s problems. And perhaps she could play Overwatch for a bit.
She was surprised, and then alarmed, as she walked blearily down the stairs, to hear that the kettle was already boiling. She stopped, remembering that the burglar alarm was still below her in the hall. It was only relatively recently, after she’d been bathed in the water from the well in the woods, and become able to see the magical powers surrounding and threatening Lychford, that she’d even started turning it on. She couldn’t get to the emergency button, but her phone was charging upstairs. She’d started to carefully make her way back up when a voice called from below. “Do you want a cuppa?”
She recognised the voice, and the way it had just said the most ordinary of sentences as if it was learning a foreign language, and was first relieved, then angry.
She marched down the stairs and into the kitchen to find Finn, Prince of the Fairies, appreciatively watching her kettle boil as if it was some sort of modern art installation. “What the hell are you doing here?” she said.
He turned to look at her, not his usual jovial self. “Something strange is happening. I’d have gone to see, you know, the other one—”
“You mean Autumn? Your ex?”
Finn’s supernaturally handsome features creased into the most gorgeous frown Lizzie had ever seen. It really was hard to stay angry with him. Which was, in itself, worrying. “I can’t be expected to remember everyone. You people keep . . . reproducing. And then I look up from whatever I’m doing and you’ve had a millennium and I’m like ‘where does the time go?’ and—”
“Is there any point in asking how you got in? And yes, now you’re here, I do want some strong black coffee, thank you.”
Finn, as if he was following the most exotic process of preparation, and looking to her for guidance every other moment, made just that, and for himself poured hot water onto a tea bag it looked like he’d brought along, because Lizzie was pretty sure she didn’t own any that glowed green. “I got in by walking down past the walls, which was really hard, as expected, because the Vicarage still has about it some of the old shapes of protection.”
“I thought that in Lychford the vicar and, you know, magic people were always on the same side?”
Finn took a long drink from his mug, and glowed slightly green himself for a moment. “You church folk are indeed usually allies with the wise woman of the town, but the nation of my father, we’re not always friends with humans. This is reasonably easy to grasp, surely? Human beings still have different nations. You have borders even from your allies, right?”
“True.”
“So those who built the Vicarage made its shape to defend against people like me slipping in and out without a lot of effort. Hence this.” He pointed to his mug. “Keeps my strength up. Like I said, I’d have gone to see one of the other two for preference, but the old one’s got some serious ‘keep away’ hoo-hah round her place these days, and Autumn’s got a guest over.”
“Oh?” Lizzie realised she’d put the wrong note in her voice and changed it to a more neutral “Oh.”
Finn raised a frankly delightful eyebrow. “How are she and that new lad of hers doing?”
“How do you know about that?”
Finn just pointed at himself.
“Has that question got anything to do with the sort of company she’s got this morning?”
“Not sure. Probably not. So how are she and Luke doing?”
Lizzie noted that he knew Autumn’s boyfriend’s name. “They have their ups and downs, but they’re still together. He’s off on some teaching thing up north.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Why?”
“Because of this strangeness that’s been going on. As I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted, today it wasn’t just the shape of this place that made it hard to get in here. Something has happened to the borders. Leaving fairy and getting into Lychford is normally just about taking a step here and a step there. This time it was like stumbling down a hill. I felt like I’d crash any moment, and I don’t know what crashing would even involve. When I get back, everyone’ll be yelling about this.”
“That is worrying. Okay, thanks for—”
“But that’s not why I came here! I only found that out on the way here! And now I think of it, maybe the two are connected, because this is damnable, this is unconscionable, this I was sent from the court of my father with urgent diplomatic condemnation concerning!”
Lizzie held up her hands, amazed at the sudden fury which had taken him over. It was as if he had remembered that he was supposed to be officially angry, and in that moment, took on that emotion for real. Once again, she’d been reminded that though a fairy like Finn might resemble a human being, he was actually very different. “What?!”
“What,” yelled Finn, pointing out of the window in the direction of the repetitive beats, “is that bloody music?”
Lizzie could only shrug in agreement. “I know.” Then she realised she was representing possibly the entire human race in an official diplomatic negotiation with another . . . species? If that was what fairies were. Not a situation she expected to encounter while still in her dressing gown. She made herself straighten up and adjusted her robe. “I mean . . .” she said, more carefully, “I don’t know.”
Finn sighed. “I now have a new winner for our ‘stupid things humans say’ board.”
“Do you really have a—?”
“What you’re trying to say is: you don’t know what that music is either?”
“I know what it is.” And before he could scream in frustration, Lizzie quickly explained the concept of illegal raves, from the perspective of someone
who’d last gone out dancing two decades ago.
Finn seemed relieved to at least have an explanation he could take back to his father. “Well, normally I’d be all for that, and good work there with the mind-expanding drugs, because at least someone here’s trying, but how is the sound of it getting into fairy? We’ve got stuff to do, you know. We need the sleep of ages under the hills. We can’t be having with dush dush dush all the time.”
“So the dance music is . . . keeping the fairies awake?”
“That’s what I just said. Try to keep up.”
“Well, our local police, such as they are, will be out trying to find it, I should think.”
“Probably, though I’ve seen a few of them this morning doing other things besides. But what worries me most is, since I got here I’ve had a bit of a look for where the music’s coming from, and I can’t find it. And I have the nose of a bloodhound. In my pocket.” He took something that Lizzie really hoped was a felt novelty of some kind from his jacket and showed it to her. “So your police won’t be able to. You put that together with the borders getting messed up, and it’s big trouble for everyone.”
“You’re right. I’ll tell the others.”
Finn seemed satisfied. “Excellent. This is what the three of you are for.” He threw back the remains of his tea, then glanced suspiciously at Lizzie, carefully washed out his mug, and retrieved the tea bag. “Good luck with it. Now I have to go home and listen to everyone at court getting worked up all over again. Let’s hope you can deal with it before that boils over into, you know, the collapse of reality. Or whatever.” And with a gesture that seemed somehow dismissive as well as functional, he vanished. Then there was a sudden clonk sound from somewhere inside the walls, and a cry of pain, and then a motion of air that Lizzie somehow knew meant that now he’d actually gone, on the second attempt, and that the Vicarage’s old defences were still good for some things.