by Paul Cornell
Judith knew that the real world of magic wasn’t like Harry Potter. Everyone had different names for the beings that came from the other worlds that bordered on theirs. And the degree to which those things recognised and understood human beings depended on how much they’d interacted with human cultures. The fairies, for instance, had a long tradition of cultural exchange. Which usually went one way, mind you, but at least their lust and avarice and anger meant they took the time to magic up human languages.
This lot . . . well, she had so little to go on. “Good morning,” she said. Which was more polite than she’d be to most human beings.
They moved closer, interested, worried, maybe aggressive.
“Do you like mints?” She reached into the pocket of her cardigan and brought out a rather old packet of black and white striped ones. “They’re very bad for me.”
A jolt of light hit the packet, grabbed it, and threw it aside.
Judith was about to start telling the damn thing off, because it was either that or lose control of her bowels when there came, from behind her, something that was a mixture of a bellow and a scream.
A figure leapt out of nothingness, grabbed her, and hauled her away in a moment to an area of the black surface where the beings were no longer present. She was pretty sure, mind you, that in a space this small, they hadn’t actually lost track of her, but had held back from following.
The man, because it was a man, looked around urgently. He was shaking with fear. But now Judith had realised who it was. “Rory Holt,” she said.
“Judith Mawson? Oh, that’s right, you work for her, don’t you? Did she get you too?”
Judith didn’t know quite how to answer that.
“We should be safe this far into the bush,” he continued. “She teleported us to another planet, like on Star Wars.”
Judith realised that his senses, limited, unlike hers, to what he’d been born with, were making an entirely different sort of sense of what was around them. “If that works for you,” she said.
“What the hell did you think you were doing, offering those monsters sweets? I hid as soon as I saw ’em. You reckon she’ll come back to finish us off? All right, we can’t talk here, come back to my camp and you tell me everything you know.”
And he grabbed her hand and hauled her off. He couldn’t perceive how small the world he was in was, Judith quickly realised. They were actually walking like two idiots in some theatre show, pretending to go for miles with big, silly steps as the ground rolled beneath them.
* * *
With much yelling on his part, Autumn had managed to get the lorry driver, whose name she’d learned was Marcin, out of his cab. She’d taken his weight and basically let him fall on her to get to the ground. He lay there, sobbing with pain, as she got to her feet and looked around again.
Still the silence. Still nothing moving. Still the feeling there was something out there.
She’d already found a suitable stick, and taken a roll of strong tape out of the back of the lorry. She knelt beside Marcin, and started wrapping the stick to his leg. As she worked, she tried to stay aware of her surroundings. But as she was pulling tight the last piece of tape . . . what was—?
Something was standing right beside her.
She leapt up, spun round. But there was nothing there. It had been just in the corner of her eye. But she was sure something had been there.
“Did you see anything?” she asked Marcin. It was obvious he hadn’t.
She shook her head, checked the binding, and carefully helped him to his feet. The splint held.
“Good,” he said. “Who are you? What do you, about—?” He indicated what was around them.
Autumn decided she had to tell him something. “Good witch,” she said, pointing at herself. Not that she believed that in any sense of the words.
To his credit, Marcin only boggled for a moment. He put a finger to his nose and wiggled it. “Dee dee, dee dee . . .”
Autumn was glad she’d seen clips from Bewitched online. She joined in with humming the theme tune for a moment. “Yeah, and her spells kept going wrong too, with hilarious results.”
“Witch with doctor, leg?”
She felt awkward. Not so much. “I try to do science too.”
“Get us home, okay?”
“Okay—” And there was the thing in the corner of her eye again. This time she managed to stop herself from jumping, and tried to look sidelong at it. This was something that could keep itself just about hidden, even from her extra senses. It was just a white blur, a furtive figure, the same shape as a human being, but . . . no, she couldn’t see any features.
She leapt back, sure that in that second it had moved to touch her. It had been the jerk of a predator striking. She felt like it had only just missed.
She grabbed the startled Marcin and heaved him up. “Come on!” she bellowed.
She was sure he could just about hobble along. But where could they run to?
* * *
Stewie had sighingly headed with Lizzie and the bearded lad to the makeshift car park. It should, it seemed, have been at the end of the lane that ran up the other side of the hill. But as they’d made their way through the trees, Stewie had got increasingly confused, had even stopped to look at the map app on his phone. Whatever he found had just made him swear. “How can we be lost? It was just over here.”
Finally, having walked in a straight line, they’d returned to the barn.
“No,” he’d said, turning slowly round. “No. Who put something in my water? You think that’s funny?” He’d swung to point at Lizzie, his hand going to his back pocket, where he may or may not have had a knife. “Who are you?”
Lizzie had seen two large individuals in high vis jackets coming over to see what was agitating their boss, and had decided to put her cards on the table. “I’m your only chance of getting home.”
It had taken some doing, but in the end, once the big lads had also gone to find the cars and returned from the wrong direction, startled looks on their faces, Lizzie had got Stewie to listen. He’d gone to the tent, got the DJ to switch everything off, and had shepherded the crowd, who were now sure the police were arriving, into an audience around them.
Lizzie had told them the truth, or as much as they needed to know, and had found them, perhaps unsurprisingly, pretty easy to convince of just about anything. Not that what she was telling them hadn’t created its share of sobbing, shouting, and hysterical laughter. At least while she’d been talking she’d come up with the start of a plan to get them out of here.
She pointed back to the tent. “We need to get that PA started up again.”
They showed her how they did that, and she got up behind the DJ’s mixing decks, on stacks of crates at one end of the barn. Thank goodness nobody was taking a photo of her. She would look like the worst possible trendy vicar. The DJ, who looked like she was about twelve, couldn’t stop staring. “Could you turn up the volume to full?” Lizzie asked. She bent to the microphone. “Testing,” she said. “This is Lizzie, calling Finn. Come in, Finn. Or anyone in the Court of the Unseen. Come in.”
“It’s not a radio,” said the DJ, obviously wondering if the newbie knew anything at all about the world.
“But,” said Lizzie, “I know the people I’m talking to can hear it.”
* * *
Judith, getting tired of being dragged along like she was in a half-arsed mime troupe, had finally shouted to Rory Holt to stop. She’d been about to tell him that she was here to rescue him, but then, over his shoulder, Judith had seen something appear out of the nothingness. She’d grabbed Rory, put a hand over his mouth, and, while he was wetly yelling into her palm, spun him round to see.
A group of the flying beings had gathered. More of them this time. Too many to count easily as they shifted and melted into each other. Between them was . . . this was their version of a device, she realised. It was a solid golden sphere that shot between them.
Rory stiffened i
n horror. “They’ve brought their cooking pot. That’s meant for us.”
Judith didn’t believe for a second that that was what was going on here. “What do you see of what they’re doing?”
“It’s some kind of native religion. We’re in Ooga Booga Land here.”
Judith wondered what sort of books Rory had read when he was growing up. If they could see these beings now, it was because they wanted to be seen, though Rory was now miming parting foliage with his hands, as if he was spying on them at the edge of a clearing. “I think,” she said, “these might be what some call sprites. There are loads of different ones. They’re summat to do with elements, not like iron and whatnot, more like principles. This lot are fire sprites. Back when we lived in caves, they’re meant to have come over and started campfires. To be on speaking terms with one was summat people boasted about, or more often kept to themselves. Then we get electricity and—”
“What are you going on about, woman?”
“—suddenly they’re from ‘Ooga Booga Land.’”
“But you can see them right there, see them with your own eyes.”
“But we’re seeing different things.”
Rory was looking annoyed at her. “Here, I’m on your side, remember? You sound like her. She sent us here, so this is probably where she’s from. She’s been hiding among us, pretending not to be an alien, but now we know.”
Judith didn’t feel like arguing with this idiot. “Right,” she said, and stepped forward to address the sprites. “Afternoon,” she said, doing her best to put on her posh voice. For some stupid reason. “I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot.” She looked over her shoulder and saw Rory hadn’t followed her, but was still “hiding in the bushes,” gesturing urgently for her to come back. “That one can’t see you properly. But I bring the right tribute.” She reached into the pocket of her cardigan and found her big box of household matches, the foundation of any good witch’s pocket contents. She struck one, and solemnly held it up toward the sprites.
They seemed to confer for a moment, and just before even Judith with her Teflon fingers had to drop the match, the fire was sucked away to join their light. Judith looked between them. They’d taken care to position themselves to all get a bit of that flame. Judith took out match after match and lit them, letting them take the fire, until she only had a few left. She showed them those in the box. “Do you want to save some for later?”
From behind her, there came the noise of Rory slowly “stepping out of the bushes.” “Wise woman make fire,” he said. “Very powerful.”
Judith sighed. If only he knew. “Can you understand me?” she asked them. The sprites paused for a moment. Then the golden ball flew at her and stopped an inch in front of her nose. On its surface was an image of a diminishing ball . . . or bubble. It got smaller even as Judith watched.
Judith swore under her breath.
“What is it?” said Rory. “Are they still thinking about eating us?”
Judith didn’t know how to put it in terms he’d understand. This knot was collapsing. Very soon it would vanish out of existence. And they would almost certainly vanish with it.
3
Autumn had heaved Marcin along, putting all her hungover desperate strength into keeping him moving. Whatever was after them seemed to be like one of those predators in wildlife documentaries that circled their prey, then rushed in. Maybe her putting up a fight that time had made it wary. What did those documentaries say about facing a bear? Make yourself big and yell? Or was that for a mountain lion? Living in rural England, she hadn’t paid much attention to those bits.
Marcin had been yelling questions at her, only about half of them in English. What were they running from? It hurt! He got to the point of actually fighting her off, and so, finally, she’d been forced to drop him. Now here they were, on a slight rise among some close trees, which Autumn hoped might give her some idea of when the thing approached. Marcin was lying on the ground screaming insults at her in Polish, and she was looking around, trying to watch out of the corner of her eyes. Which was really pretty bloody difficult. It kept making you want to just keep turning your head.
How the hell was she going to get him to close his eyes and put his fingers in his ears? Would the pain of his injury even let him lose concentration? Assuming that was actually how they could get out of this.
She needed to be able to see her enemy. What could let her see it better? What could let her see something the extra senses given to her by the well in the woods didn’t let her see?
She realised. Today she had already experienced just that. That dust Judith had thrown over her. If she could find some . . . She looked desperately in her pockets, ran her hand through her hair. Thank God. Here was just a trace of it on her fingers. The dust that had actually worked must get used up as it did so. She had no idea what this stuff was, so she could only hope that Judith activated it just by thinking some magical power into it.
But, what could she actually do with it? She could throw this tiny handful of dust at whatever this thing was when she was sure it was near. That would give her something of it she could see. But having to let it again get that close . . .
Oh. Oh, she’d just thought of something awful.
No, she couldn’t hesitate. If Judith had shown her anything, it was that magic was about sacrifice.
She held open her left eye with one hand, and with the other . . . she quickly rubbed the dust into the eye, thinking magical power into it as she did so. She could hear Marcin make an uncomprehending noise of fear.
The dust was very fine. It didn’t hurt as much as she expected—
Her eye was suddenly on fire. She screamed.
She blinked and slowly the pain subsided, and the colours washed into half of her brain, and she had to close the other eye for a second, because now she could see . . . everything!
The knot they were in, she could see the lines of force all around it. It was really small, and it was . . . getting slightly smaller, all the time, she could see the tension in the coloured threads. She could see them moving. And oh God, they were, they were moving inwards!
She looked down and saw the threads that still wrapped round her, how they loosely led off to connect to . . . she could see the connections now. They ran off from her body in all directions, linked into a great weave that was wrapped around the knot, that was the knot, that also went beyond it. All she had to do was to concentrate on one particular aspect, the shrinking or the relative tension, or one colour, and there it was, at the front of her mind, clear to her sight.
She turned and looked at Marcin. He was swimming with colour, all the flavours and influences that had made him. She could see his family, their history, the big moments of his life, intimacies that she shied away from and regretted seeing, but . . . okay, overall feeling, here was a good guy, so thank all the gods she didn’t believe in for that at least. She didn’t know what the individual threads meant, she’d been seeing stuff at random, had no idea how to discern that part of it. That would be the next level of this deep structure, that lived underneath their own special senses, that Judith knew about and could access if she wanted to, but that she’d never bothered to . . . no, when had Judith not done what had to be done? It must be more like she’d never needed to examine it.
It was like Autumn had a tube map, but without any of the names of lines or stations.
Still, hell of a map.
She heard a sound behind her that she was pretty sure she couldn’t have heard before, because the warning signal flared in her new sight too, a sudden burst of threads into her eye. She spun round.
And there was the creature. Right beside her. It had the shape of a man, but was almost a silhouette, a few lines of a sketch. Only it was stark white. It had no features, but Autumn knew it was looking at her.
Suddenly, it hopped from one side to the other, then back again. That was something that predators did, wasn’t it? It was getting its eyes lined up on her, and it was
n’t sure how strong she was.
Neither was she.
Slowly, keeping her eye on it, she reached down and helped Marcin to his feet. “You’re . . . seeing a thing?”
“Yes, and it’s real and it’s right in front of us.” She managed to get him upright, and was about to reach down to pick up the biggest nearby stick when she realised she was trying to get her hand past one of the coloured threads to do it, that she could feel them now, by touch as well, feel them wrapped around her like she was covered in a sort of . . . electric pullover.
This ability to see and feel the threads wouldn’t last long. But it would last longer than they would if that thing attacked. However, it was planning to do that. She could pick up the stick or . . .
She didn’t know what any of the threads meant or where any of them led. But now she could see how they fitted together. So if she just—
The creature leapt forward.
Autumn grabbed the nearest thread and heaved.
* * *
Lizzie had tried calling Finn’s name into the microphone, and all the other names she’d heard associated with him. She’d waited, but no response had come. Of course, it was perfectly possible that he could hear her, but couldn’t get inside the knot. Given how he’d walked into her house, however, despite the collapse of the borders into new shapes, she rather doubted that. The problem had previously been that he hadn’t been able to find where this was.
So she’d started to describe their location, both geographically, talking about the old barn and the track that led up the hillside, and temporally, trying to precisely describe where the full moon was. Because, and a quick peep outside the barn had confirmed it, that moon was staying put.
Now she was elaborating on those details. The bemused DJ was looking on, convinced that she’d flipped. And yeah, maybe a lack of faith in her sanity right now would be appropriate. A shout came from outside. Then a whole bunch of yells and cheers and even screams.