Advent

  ‘It will come to you today.’ Her eyes didn’t open. He watched the lines at the corners of her mouth, etched in the harsh lamplight. A catch came into her voice, as if talking was suddenly uncomfortable. ‘You will bear it on your back. You will not know it. You will lose it. Lost in whiteness. You must go and find it. You must go, Gawain. Across sea and land, on the other side of the night, where an ocean girl tends it. An ocean girl tends it. An ocean girl.’

  When she’d gone quiet long enough for him to be sure she was finished, he said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The truth.’ She swayed back, disentangling her fingers from his. He noticed that his bare feet were incredibly cold.

  ‘What truth?’ Hazily it occurred to him that he’d probably never spoken a stupider sentence in his life, which was saying something.

  ‘There will be fire and blood.’ She shivered. Her hands vanished inside her cloak, clutching it to her tightly. ‘Truth hurts. It’s a heavy burden, Gawain. One took it from me before and could not bear it. The world will find it a bitter weight.’

  His head was spinning. He wanted to go back indoors, get warm, go to sleep. He couldn’t believe this was happening.

  ‘What do I do?’ It was all he could think of to say. For years he’d imagined her as his guide and guardian. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  She stared quietly back at him for a while and then answered. ‘Will you kiss me goodbye?’

  ‘Goodbye?’ His mouth shaped the word without a sound.

  She stepped close to him and turned up her face.

  It was like kissing moss. She smelled of dry earth. Breath from her nose tickled his cheek.

  ‘That is the last true kiss you will receive,’ she said, as she dropped back onto her heels.

  ‘When—’ he began, but he couldn’t get hold of what he thought he’d wanted to say. While their lips had touched, he’d closed his eyes, and in the momentary darkness he had felt, distinctly, the motion of the whole earth around him, and the inconceivable ancientness beneath his feet and above his head, between which life flickered and flowed as gaudy and slippery and thin as an iridescent film of oil on the surface of the ocean.

  ‘And my last also,’ she murmured peacefully. ‘My death comes.’

  A red light flared behind him, throwing stark shadows across the road. With a gut-wrenching shock Gav realised they were standing in the middle of it and were about to be run over. He was still so stupefied by her kiss that the coming car registered painfully slowly, as if he had to construct the thought of being about to die piece by piece. The light grew intensely bright. He spun round, throwing his hands up, turning in useless slow motion. He wondered why the car was making no noise. He wondered why he couldn’t accelerate his chilled limbs to push Miss Grey out of the way or jump before he got crushed.

  Then he stood facing dumbly down the lane, all those thoughts skidding away as crazily as they’d arrived.

  There was no car. Headlights were white anyway, not orange-red; he remembered that now. The light had faded almost to nothing. He couldn’t see what had caused it. There was nothing there. All that remained was a hazy shimmer in the air like the evanescent tongues of flame around the charred wood of a dying fire. The glow was concentrated around Hester’s front garden. For all he could see it had fallen from the sky and was now dissolving into her house. It dimmed, a miniature sunset, and was gone.

  Gav turned back to Miss Grey, half expecting to see her prone and crumpled in the road. She regarded him as solemnly as before.

  ‘I think,’ he began. He stuck his hands in his pockets, looked up at the now empty sky and then down at his toes. ‘I really think . . . you should tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘A door is open,’ she said. ‘For a long time it was closed. It shut me out.’

  ‘No,’ he said, before she could go on. ‘No, listen. What’s going on here, now? I need to know.’

  A thud came from somewhere behind him, inside Hester’s house, but Gav couldn’t take his eyes off Miss Grey. Though she was standing still, she seemed to stagger. The cords in her neck tightened. Her eyelids fluttered.

  ‘A woman sleeps,’ she said. ‘Other women sleep. Men sleep. Children sleep.’ Her eyes closed tight as if something had hurt her. ‘A woman who is no woman sits awake. She sits by the light of a fire that is no fire and dreams of salvation for the world. A death that is no death waits for her in the water.’ Gav wanted to interrupt, but the mad monologue was gathering speed like a tumbling boulder. ‘A boy sleeps. The water waits for him. He will bear my burden. O o kakka.’ Flickers of pain creased her face. ‘Iew iew. In the branches the feasters dream their feast. Gawain. Gawain. A boy stands in the road. The road is dark before him and behind.’ A dreadful stain of panic spread through her voice. ‘A long road. A long road!’ Gav stepped towards her, suddenly and absurdly worried that she was going to wake the neighbours. ‘Otototoi! A boy stands at the beginning of a long road. It will scratch and tear his feet. It will flay his back. It will hold him up. Let the earth hold him up. Behind him my end comes out an open door.’ She was shaking like wheat in the wind, hugging herself. ‘At last. At last. Destroyer. The final arrow is loosed. The empty quiver. My death. My death! My death! My—’

  He reached out and grabbed her shoulders. The babbling and shivering stopped at once, as though he’d silenced a struck bell. She drew in a long, gasping, wordless breath, coming up for air. She opened her eyes.

  In the sudden silence something rustled among the bushes of Hester’s garden behind, some night animal.

  She relaxed.

  They looked at each other, Miss Grey and her ward.

  ‘There it is,’ she said, with a kind of smile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My death.’

  Light erupted behind him. As he spun round he heard a deep and unspeakably malevolent growl and saw a spray of cold fire. The sky filled with screeching shadows as roosting crows took sudden flight. Gav’s knees gave way, terror dropped him to the ground, and as the billow of flame faded he saw in the road outside Hester’s house the lean face of a huge black dog, crouching keenly, its fanged mouth dripping burning gobbets. In its breath was the undersong of the hunting mask, Kill kill kill. He stumbled to his feet. Miss Grey stood just as she had, perfectly unmoving. He looked to her frantically for help and knew that she was no help at all. She’d never been any help. The beast padded toward them, a brutish rumble coming from behind its clenched jaws. Liquid flame puddled on the asphalt behind it. Gav edged away. The dog swung its massive black head and fixed its eyes on him. They were burning too, smouldering with feral malice. His legs trembled; the air turned to ice in his lungs; it was all he could do not to collapse in a heap.

  The horrific gaze released him, turning deliberately away.

  It fixed on Miss Grey.

  The black dog twisted back its head and howled. Fire spurted again from its throat. Gav threw his hands up to his face. It came slowly forward, towards her.

  She looked pathetically tiny. She stood before it as if paralysed, as if already dead.

  ‘No,’ Gav whispered.

  Its claws raked against the road. The head lowered, fanged mouth parting, trickling oily flame as it approached her. Still Miss Grey did not move.

  ‘No,’ he said, louder. ‘No.’

  A ripple ran over its black flanks. Its muscles bunched. It halted. Its head swivelled round to him. There were still runnels of fire in its mouth, red-gold saliva. Oh shit, Gav thought, that was stupid, suicidally stupid, but it was done. He met its gaze. I’m going to die now, he decided. The realisation seemed more weird than tragic. Let’s get it over with.

  The dog appeared to swallow uncomfortably. Its mouth opened, its tongue stiffened, and it spat out a strange, hollow bark.

  Gav was so amazed at not yet being ripped to shreds that he became reckless with terror. ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘Stop. Clear off.’

  The quiver ran through it again. It shook its head as if in pain,
and its tail dropped between its legs. Gav stood straighter. His knees wobbled ridiculously, as if he was a toddler, but he hadn’t collapsed, he hadn’t fallen, he wasn’t dead. He took a deep breath and made himself speak clearly and firmly, the way you were supposed to talk to dogs. ‘Get out of it.’ Insane bravado made him shout louder. ‘Piss off. Go on.’

  It twisted round and ran away into the dark.

  He stared after it. He couldn’t feel his hands or feet or his heartbeat. Trickles of sweat turned icy on the back of his neck.

  ‘That was well done, Gawain,’ Miss Grey said.

  Breathing hard, his fists slowly unclenching, he swivelled round to her. There might have been the faintest of smiles on her shadowed face.

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Don’t forget me,’ she whispered. She touched her fingers to her lips. ‘No one else will remember. You only.’

  ‘I . . . What?’ he said. ‘No. Never.’

  ‘You were always a kind child. It was you I loved. Goodbye.’

  ‘Hey.’ But she was suddenly swift. Her cloak floated out without a sound, she stepped out of the pool of light, and the shadows began rubbing away at her as she walked down the lane towards the dark. ‘No. Wait.’ Gav was too astonished to react. Hadn’t he just driven away her death? He’d saved her. Now she wouldn’t have to leave him after all. No goodbyes. They could go back to how it was when he was little and she was his best and only friend. He’d never wish her away again, never.

  ‘Wait!’ The darkness welcomed her amazingly quickly, as it had swallowed the hideous dog. He darted down the lane after her, but already he couldn’t even see she was there, though he knew she must be. He’d always known she had to be there. Even when home was at its worst and he was shut in his bedroom crying face down into his pillow so no one would hear him, he’d known deep down that she was out there somewhere.

  ‘Wait!’ He ran out of the puddle of light and couldn’t see a thing. He blundered on in the dark and smacked into an invisible parked car, stubbing his naked toe hard on some lump of metal. He fell into the road, clutching his feet, screeching in pain.

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted desperately, when his breath came back. ‘Please!’

  A light came on in an upstairs window.

  ‘Please.’ He stared out of the village, into the black. Nothing.

  ‘Don’t leave me alone,’ he said, barely louder than a breath.

  The creak and slide of a window opening.

  ‘What the hell’s going on out there?’ shouted a man’s voice.

  Gav hunched into a ball on the road, hugging his knees, gazing after her.

  ‘If I hear anything else, I’m calling the police! Do you understand? People are trying to sleep!’ The window banged shut crossly. A few moments later the light flicked off.

  ‘Please come back,’ he said, to the darkness.

  When he’d been a little kid, he used to think she came as soon as he wanted her. If he was feeling particularly lonely or sad, or Mum and Dad were being particularly mean or unfair, it always seemed like she’d be there before long, looking up at his window with that face that was never cross, maybe pointing out something that would cheer him up: a cloud shaped like a dragon, a tiny winged brown boy perched on the garden fence. Part of the misery of growing up had been realising he couldn’t make her come and go any more than he could make it rain. She wouldn’t answer his call. She never came when he begged. He’d said all the words he would ever be able to say to her. He was shivering in a country lane in the middle of the night. That was all.

  He looked back towards the streetlamp. The road was empty but for his shoes, sitting like wreckage in the glare. He stared at them for a long, long time. He kept thinking he was going to cry, but he didn’t. He felt hollow. A great many memories passed by in the darkness, things he’d tried not to think about for years because he’d been doing his best to forget Miss Grey.

  The church bell struck, one dismal stroke. It sounded like a single word: Come.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he whispered, and touched his lips. They told him his fingers were freezing. His feet were freezing too.

  You’re on your own now, he thought to himself. It’s all up to you, Gav.

  Gawain.

  It was something she’d left him with.

  He tried saying it aloud, not much more than a whisper. ‘Gawain.’ He muttered it a few more times, to get into the habit. I’m someone else now, he thought. Gavin’s finished. He’s the one Mum and Dad used to say things to, all the stuff he now knew was rubbish. You’re too old to make up this nonsense now, Gavin.

  ‘Gawain.’ It made him feel older, and more serious. A courtly name, and an old-fashioned one. It settled around him like a ceremonial garment. He straightened his back.

  It was all he had to begin with. Still, it struck him as the right sort of beginning, now that he thought about it. It was like being knighted. Arise, Sir Gawain. Your destiny awaits, whatever it is. Go forth and . . .

  What?

  What would he do, now he was on his own?

  He sat cross-legged on the tarmac, his toes tucked under his thighs, and thought, slowly and carefully, about everything that had happened to him since Miss Grey had found her terrible voice on the train. He didn’t try to believe it, or not believe. He made very sure not to try that trick Gavin had learned of putting his head down and letting it pass, clamping the impervious mask on his face and waiting for it all to go away.

  Then he thought, just as slowly and just as carefully, about everything she’d said to him. This time he didn’t let himself dismiss it as nonsense, the way Gavin would have. There was no more Gavin. Gavin was finished.

  He sat quietly, letting the words echo around inside. My burden . . . You must go and find it . . . An ocean girl tends it. An ocean girl. The words were all of Miss Grey he had left, so he held them close.

  A cold while passed. He began to think he understood what Gawain had to do, who he had to find.

  A dog barked, banishing the echoes. He jumped to his feet at once, scanning the night, heart drumming. He heard it again, somewhere off beyond the village, perhaps closer this time.

  After a few seconds’ hesitation he trotted back to the streetlamp. He couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder every few steps. Nothing stirred. He picked up his shoes and socks, and made his way back into Hester’s house. There were no voices inside now. The room was so quiet he could hear Hester’s peaceful breathing through the ceiling.

  He clicked the door shut, felt for the bolt in the dark and locked it.

  But he knew Miss Grey had been talking about a different door. There’d be no closing that one behind him, not for him. Not for anyone.

  Nineteen

  The dead of a winter night, before the dawn of another world.

  Dressed all in black, a woman who was no woman leaned on a staff thicker than her wrist and looked out through a screen of stunted blackthorn towards the sea. She shuddered in the cold.

  Behind her stood a thing like a misshapen shadow.

  In the distance, around the curving bay, a hazy glow lit up the underside of heavy clouds. A lighthouse speared its intermittent brilliance across the water. There were other, smaller lights around a wide harbour mouth, navigation markers winking red and green and white. The woman surveyed this view silently.

  When she eventually spoke, her voice grated strangely in her own mouth.

  ‘The stars have fallen.’

  The edges of the shadow ruffled, as if it too were shivering.

  ‘These are the latter days,’ she continued, after a silence. It was not clear to whom she spoke, if anyone. Her gaze remained fixed across the bay.

  ‘Are the towns burning?’ she asked. ‘I see no smoke.’

  ‘No fire.’ It was the shadow that answered, in a voice even harsher than hers.

  ‘Then perhaps the mouth of hell gapes beneath the clouds there. Perhaps the harvest has begun.’

  ‘Bad time,’ the shadow agreed.

  �
�Is this truly England?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  She twitched and shrugged in her clothes as if they didn’t fit properly. ‘The twilight was dismal. Perhaps the sun and moon have also fallen.’

  ‘Dawn coming. Long way off.’

  ‘This is a dying world.’ The shadow might as well not have corrected her for all the attention she paid it. ‘Or already dead. Its woods and fields are barren.’

  Across the river valley a light winked out. An upstairs light in a house, perhaps, or a bulb failing at someone’s front steps.

  ‘Did you see that, puka?’

  ‘No no.’

  ‘Even the stars expire where they fall. Their virtue is long gone. I feel it. They are scattered here cold and silent.’

  ‘Not stars,’ muttered the shadow, but the woman must have thought it was agreeing with her, if she was listening to it at all. She addressed it as one might address a dog.

  ‘I was dead too.’ Her voice sunk to a rasping whisper. ‘I died and returned.’

  There was no answer to this. The woman stared out at the black water, remembering. Her free hand rose absently to her chest, where something small and smooth and round hung like a pendant from a silver chain round her neck. Her fingers closed around it.

  ‘I bear the seed of the world’s life.’

  Up here on the higher ground of the headland there was always wind, even on a night as still as this. The shadow shifted, seeming to fold inwards, huddling down for warmth. Its motion made a rustling noise, pulling the woman out of her reverie.

  She spoke over her shoulder. ‘The pilgrim at the gate. Do you remember him?’

  ‘Can’t forget.’

  ‘He knelt and greeted me in our saviour’s name.’

  ‘Made him go. Ran off.’

  ‘Perhaps I would have done better to hear him out. Perhaps . . .’

  Silence returned. The woman stood, rapt by her unfinished thought, until the cold broke through her dreams and she shivered so violently she had to clutch the staff with both hands. For the first time she turned round, away from the wide view northeastwards.