by Unknown
‘Here? Now?’ her disbelief beat at him with the force of fury. ‘Are you insane?’
‘It’s important that you put it on now, before the fighting starts. You need to see it for what it really is. I told you that knowing and seeing are entirely different things, remember? Your Aunt Mary would want you to.’
‘What’s she got to do with this?’
‘Everything! She asked me to make something beautiful from her – you, wearing this. Please, just do it, will you?’
His earnestness persuaded her, and she put it on. It was well she did so, because at that moment the first of the bulldozers began to roll, announcing its charge with a great rattling diesel snarl. It shrugged off the stones and bricks which were lobbed at it by the camp’s defenders and easily demolished their barricade. Through the breach poured the ranks of bailiffs and riot police. Scuffles and brawls broke out on all sides, while in the chaos the Old Guard in their dark suits and flashing steel clashed with the Danaan, who had assumed their Elder forms and burned like stars. They fought unseen by human eyes, as they had always done, but as Whelan dragged Silke to safety he could tell that she saw everything.
She saw Ceneric’s blade open Mirron’s arm to the elbow in a spray of blood, and then the Old Guard warrior staggered back, screaming and staring at his hand where it gripped the sword. The wolfshead hilt decorations which Whelan had made from his dead wife’s crystal flesh were writhing, turning, and savaging Ceneric’s fingers, while the raven-claw pommel cap gripped his wrist, preventing him from dropping the weapon or pulling it free. He fell back, protected by his fellows as he howled and his fist ran red.
She saw her lover, wounded, utterly unhuman and retching from the touch of iron, and she turned to her Uncle, who she saw now was only the outer shell of a man immeasurably older. Her eyes widened with sudden, terrified clarity.
‘Uncle John!’ she cried. ‘What is this?’ Her voice carried through the sounds of fighting, and both the Old Guard and the Danaan alike turned to see him properly as Wayland Smith for the first time: something a lot more than human, though much less than a god.
‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ he said coldly, addressing them. ‘It is you, Ceneric, and your kin; shed as much blood with my steel as you like, but know that my Mary will make it cost you, wound for wound. As for you, my Danaan princeling, rejoin the mortal world if you wish, but don’t expect to do it invisibly, or to be able to hide behind the affairs of ordinary people. My Mary will be finding her way into a lot of other jewellery very soon, not to mention spectacles, cameras, mirrors, windows – anything anybody looks through. The veils of the world will fall from their eyes and they’ll know you all for what you really are, and you’ll be forced to fight openly for the first time in your miserable, bloodthirsty lives. Who knows? Maybe they’ll decide that they’re better off without you altogether.’
‘Silke…’ pleaded Mirron, reaching out to her with his wounded arm, but she backed away fearfully.
‘Madman!’ gaped Ceneric. ‘There will be anarchy!’
Whelan shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Either way it will be of their making, not yours.’
He hefted his rucksack over one shoulder. It was heavy with his tools and the treasures which he’d made from Mary. The time to move on had been overdue for many years now and at last he had a good reason to do so. When ordinary people finally saw who had been living and fighting amongst them all this time, there might well be chaos – the kind of world-burning chaos of which the sirens and flames around him were just the first promise – and he had a feeling that they would soon be needing his skills again.
While mortal and immortal stared at each other in shock, he, being somewhere between the two, took advantage of the moment and slipped away into the world.
A Night to Forget
Graham Edwards
‘It can’t be a bear.’
‘It looks like one.’
‘This is England, Fran. There aren’t any bears.’
‘I know that.’
‘So what are you talking about?’
‘I’m not saying it is a bear. I’m just saying it looks like one. Where are you going?’
‘Back in a minute.’
He darted into the kitchen, a typical literal guy who saw everything in black and white. Didn’t he know the world was grey?
Beyond the open doorway, the alley running along the back of the hotel was filled with shadows. At the end of the alley were six large waste bins. Tomorrow was collection day so they were surrounded by bulging plastic bags. Beyond the bins, streetlights outlined a shabby row of coffee shops and charity stores. Nothing moved. Sea fog probed the street. Ghost town.
A massive shambling figure was rummaging through the bins: a man with shaggy hair and an even shaggier beard. His coat was shaggy too: tattered fur. He wore his breath like a vaporous helmet. He leaned heavily on a long staff just a little taller than he was.
Though she knew he was a man, Fran continued to imagine he was a bear. She’d always had a good imagination. Her father had called her a dreamer and she supposed it was true. She wished it wasn’t. Lately her dreams had been nightmares.
‘Out of the way.’ Robbie was carrying a large frying pan. Fran had to stifle a laugh.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
At the sound of her voice, the fur-clad man looked up. The cloud of his breath opened to reveal his face. It was etched with deep lines. He stumbled into the deep shadows between two of the big waste containers.
‘No, you don’t,’ said Robbie, setting off at a run.
Fran caught him just as he reached the end of the alley; Robbie was at least two stone overweight and Fran had once run for her school.
‘Come out where we can see you!’ Robbie shouted.
They circled the bins. Ruth’s heart raced. The air was December-damp. There was no sign of the intruder.
They went out into the street. No cars, no people. Just tired store fronts and tall office blocks frowning down. The fog prowled the silence.
‘He’s quick for an old codger,’ said Robbie. ‘I’ll give him that.’
Fran tapped the frying pan. ‘I hope you weren’t planning on using this.’
Robbie flashed his lop-sided grin. He was an idiot. But he’d never hurt anyone. ‘Course not. But you can’t be too careful.’
‘He was just some homeless guy. Did you see him? He could barely stand.’
‘Didn’t stop him outrunning us.’
After returning the frying pan to its rightful place, they locked the kitchen door and walked round the hotel to the small staff car park. Fran’s apartment was less than a mile down the road in the opposite direction. By the time they got to Robbie’s car she could have been halfway home. But Robbie always insisted on driving her to the door. He was good like that.
‘Don’t forget these,’ he said as she climbed into his tired old Toyota. He handed her a big jangling key ring. ‘It’s my day off tomorrow, remember?’
Fran took the keys, doubtful as ever she should be doing so. Robbie was sous-chef and so considered by the management to be a responsible adult. As a mere pot-washer, she was no more trustworthy than a toddler. Not that anyone protested when she stayed late without pay to help clean up after a night’s service, nor wondered how she managed to lock up when she was done. Those in charge probably had other things on their minds, like not letting the hotel go under. The way business had been lately, that was a real possibility.
‘Doing anything special?’ she said, stuffing the keys in the pocket of her winter coat.
Robbie started the car. ‘I’m going to visit Gordon.’
Fran’s breath froze in her throat. Just like that, he’d derailed her.
‘Okay, well, I’ll see you on Saturday.’ The words felt like fishhooks.
The journey proceeded in silence.
Robbie waited until she was inside the lobby of her apartment block before driving off. As soon as he’d gone, Fran stepped back out into the ni
ght. She sucked in the icy air and buried her hands in her pockets to shield them from its bite. The scarred skin on her palms and on the sides of her fingers and on her knuckles felt tight and achy, not just from the cold.
Gordon. Two years and all it took was his name. She couldn’t imagine ever visiting the prison, as Robbie did once a week. But then he was Gordon’s brother.
She spotted movement on the other side of the road: a bear-like figure limping towards the old cliff path. It was there and then gone, swallowed by the fog, just an apparition. She couldn’t be sure she’d seen it at all.
She took the stairs at a run.
***
Fumbling her way through her dark apartment to the kitchen, Fran wondered if she’d ever get her act together enough to buy new light bulbs. Over the course of the past two years they’d blown, one after the other. She’d never replaced them. A lot of things in her life had failed since the attack. She hadn’t done anything about any of them. She was like a DVD on permanent pause. Waiting for someone to press play.
Like the hotel where she worked, Fran’s rented apartment occupied what at first sight was a prime position at the top of the sea cliffs overlooking the bay. But appearances were deceptive. Once this whole neighbourhood had been desirable. Not any more. In the past twenty years three landslides had carved great chunks out of the rock. The cliff was stable now – so they said – but the damage had been done. Most of the properties here were still standing, but who wanted to live on the edge?
The hotel walls had as many cracks as those in Fran’s apartment but the hotel was close enough to the town to get by. Each year the management tried some new scheme to attract tourists. This year they’d opened up the old wrecking tunnel that ran from the hotel cellar down to a cave entrance near the shore: guided tours into the town’s ‘shady past’. It hadn’t been a success.
So this mile-long stretch of cliff top was a forgotten place. A place where time had stopped moving. A place to rest. A place to forget.
That suited Fran just fine.
She opened the fridge. Watery light spilled over the stained linoleum floor. Shivering – it was nearly as cold inside the apartment as outside – she snatched up a pack of cheap ham and a hard hunk of cheese. On her way out, she grabbed her battered old frying pan from the cooker top. Well, you couldn’t be too careful.
***
Crossing the road, she set off down the cliff path. There was no sign of the old man. She walked fast. It was too cold to dawdle.
The fog enveloped her. The English Channel was out there somewhere, beyond the chain-link fence and the signs warning of ground erosion, but the poor visibility rendered it invisible. She couldn’t even hear the sound of the waves on the shore.
When she reached the cliff lift she stopped. Like everything else on this side of town, the cliff lift was derelict. Once, a pair of boxy cars had trundled up and down the rock face on vertiginous tracks, ferrying holidaymakers from top to bottom and back again. The cars themselves – Victoria and Albert – were still more or less intact but the rails were a tangled mess. Both stations were fenced off; access forbidden. Kids played here, of course, and occasionally one of them got hurt. There was a campaign to restore the tracks and the old machinery and get the cars moving again. It would never happen; the ground was just too unstable.
Feet scrunched on the gravel path. A figure emerged from the fog. It was the old man. Fran, who for the past two years had jumped at every shadow, didn’t flinch.
‘I brought you some food,’ she said, pulling the meagre rations from her pocket. She put the frying pan on the ground, feeling foolish for having brought it in the first place.
The old man’s limp was more pronounced. Without his staff to lean on he would surely have fallen over. There was a slot near the top of the staff; it must once have held a blade. Surely no axe was ever that big. Light from the security lamp hanging over the condemned cliff lift turned his craggy face into a terrain more ruined than the road outside Fran’s apartment. His eyes were grey. They were fixed not on the food but on her.
‘You saw this,’ he said, patting his round stomach, ‘and still thought me hungry?’ Five thousand wrinkles rearranged themselves into ten: a smile. His voice was like wind in reeds.
‘I just thought you might need supper.’
The smile broadened into a grin. ‘I do. It’s not food that’s done this.’ He tapped his belly again.
It was a puzzling thing to say. Was he talking about ... cancer? Did he have some kind of tumour growing in there? He certainly looked ill. Fran decided not to pursue it.
The old man took the ham and cheese and consumed them methodically, showing flashes of brown teeth and a tongue so pale it was almost white. As he ate, he winced, as if each bite caused him pain. Crumbs of cheese lodged in his bushy white beard.
‘Tell me what happened to you,’ he said when he’d finished. He pointed to the glassy scars on her hands.
Waking up a little to what she was doing, Fran took a step backwards. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’
‘Just wanted to return the favour.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You did something for me. Perhaps I can do something for you.’
Fran told herself she had nothing to fear. It was less than a hundred metres back to the road. In her schooldays she could have done that in twelve seconds. This old geezer looked as if he couldn’t walk for twelve seconds without falling on his face. Had he looked this bad in the alley? If he’d told her he was dying she’d have believed him.
‘You don’t have to do anything. I’m just happy you ate the food.’
‘I met a man once. His hand was burned, like yours. He told me it had been touched by a falling star. Can you believe that?’
‘It sounds ... unlikely.’
‘Well, it was a long time ago. More years than I can count. Memories get muddled, you know. Mine more than most.’
‘What was his name?’ Fran had returned her hands to her pockets, conscious of how they looked. She flexed them, registering the familiar tightness of her damaged skin.
The old man frowned. Ten thousand wrinkles became twenty. ‘I don’t recall. There are such a lot of names in me now. It’s hard to pull them apart. Do you have any food, dear? I’m awfully hungry.’
‘Uh, I just gave you some. Ham and cheese? Remember?’
He touched the tip of his index finger to his temple, a precise and delicate gesture. ‘Ah, yes...’
His eyes rolled. Suddenly unbalanced, he dropped his staff and fell towards her. Fran raised her arms to catch him, or to fend him off, she wasn’t sure. Their hands met, palms first. The old man’s wrinkled fingers curled tight around her scarred ones. His touch was hot, feverish.
‘Let me help,’ he said.
She tried to pull away but his grip was too strong. A sudden sad hope – one she didn’t really believe – rose up in her. This man was a healer. She’d brought him six slices of ham and some dried-out cheese and as a reward he was going to take away the scars she’d been carrying around for the last two years.
His touch tingled, but the scars remained.
Something else changed though. The fog was moving ... no, swelling. Except that wasn’t right either. A bubble of emptiness was expanding inside the swirling grey vapour. An invisible balloon. It grew to the size of a person, sprouted arms, legs, a head. A human-shaped cavity in the fog, as if someone had been standing there and then gone away, and the fog hadn’t thought to flow back into the empty space.
Fran stopped struggling. The old man’s grip remained firm.
The figure in the fog was a woman, Fran’s height, Fran’s dimensions. Its face was inverted, a kind of misty life-cast. But Fran could see it was her face too.
She tried to speak; failed. Some deep part of her mind was screaming at her to wrestle herself free and run but most of her was bound up in silence. She was a point of stillness in the middle of an unfolding miracle.
The
old man’s smile had become sad.
The fog-Fran filled up with tiny dancing points of light, like fireflies. These seething insects – if that was what they were – made a scattershot diagram of pumping heart and lungs, a scintillation of circulating blood.
Fog-Fran started to walk. She didn’t go anywhere; her feet slid along just above the ground. It was like watching a tracking shot in a movie. Her fog-skirt was short and clung to her fog-hips. Her fog-legs scissored. A sassy ghost. Inside her, the fireflies swarmed.
A few metres from fog-Fran, another patch of mist rippled. A second figure coalesced. This one was taller, broader. A man. His face was muffled by a hat pulled low, a scarf wrapped high. His hands were bulked by gloves. He was holding a bottle.
Fog-Fran stopped and opened her fog-mouth. If a shriek came out, it was not made of sound. The fog-man made a shoving gesture with the bottle. A stream of something came out: a writhing liquid cloud that made the real-world Fran think of snakes and silk. Fog-Fran threw up her hands to cover her face and the liquid stuff splashed against them. Her attacker hugged the bottle to his chest and ran.
‘No,’ said Fran, yanking herself free. She backed away, rubbing her ruined hands. Her face felt hot. ‘Who are you?’
‘Don’t be afraid.’
She wasn’t afraid. She was furious. With herself, for allowing herself to be drawn into this. With him, for doing what he’d done.
Except ... what had the old man done?
Quelling the urge to flee, she circled the figures. They were frozen, motionless but for the fluttering shapes that filled them. Fog-Fran was curled over herself, hands covering her face. The fog-man was poised in mid-air, one foot brushing the ground, the other flying forwards. She resisted the urge to tear off the scarf covering his face. The thought of touching this light-filled shade revolted her.
‘This is what you remember.’ The old man’s words batted against her like moths. He made a pulling motion, as if trying to draw words from her mouth. To her surprise, the words came.
‘It was Christmas. Two years ago. I was on my way to a party. He surprised me. I never had a chance. I knew who he was. His boots. The way he ran. I don’t know why he bothered to cover up.’