Advent

  ‘Does the dryad still watch the gate?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘Good.’ Prodding around in the grass, she found the path that led back down towards the woods and the house. ‘Follow.’

  The shadow moved silently behind her as she shambled clumsily along the path.

  ‘What of the old man?’

  ‘What.’

  ‘Is he in the house still?’

  ‘Sleeping.’

  ‘You are certain?’

  ‘Last I saw.’

  ‘Good. I would prefer not to have to silence him as I silenced the changeling girl.’

  ‘Poor girl.’

  For the first time the woman’s voice gained an edge. ‘What are these people to you, puka? I am your master. No one else.’

  The shadow evidently had no answer.

  ‘The girl knew nothing of who she was. The old man knows nothing either. Let him sleep until he can be useful.’

  ‘Long sleep.’

  She stopped and turned to face it, though it was nothing more than an outline of absolute darkness against the velvet black of the night.

  ‘This is a fallen world. If I am to restore it, I must not be hindered. Not by children and old men and their weeping and senseless questions.’

  ‘Big if.’

  ‘Least of all by you, puka.’ She had ignored its muttered rejoinder entirely. ‘Never think that I cannot punish you. Never think that.’

  ‘Bad enough.’

  The resentful answer might as well not have been spoken. ‘You will not let the old man leave the house.’

  ‘Sleeping.’

  She raised her voice. ‘You will not let him leave.’

  No answer was expected, and none given.

  ‘No one must leave and no one must enter. None but the witch, if she comes.’

  ‘Not far.’

  She leaned forward towards the blackness. ‘Let us hope so, for your sake. Let us hope your disobedience is quickly undone.’

  ‘Door opened,’ it protested. ‘Man came.’

  ‘Do not answer me. I have little patience with your kind, puka. I gave you the substance you crave and you repaid me with disobedience.’

  ‘No no. Never said—’

  ‘Silence!’

  The shadow shrank in a little.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she went on, when she was sure it was listening, ‘you will search for the boy who escaped you. You will not be free to eat until he is found.’

  ‘Might be far.’

  ‘You will not be free,’ she repeated slowly, ‘until he is found.’

  The shadow’s only answer was a wordless groan, wrrraaaaa.

  ‘For ever, if need be. I will not be disobeyed. Least of all by such as you.’

  No answer.

  ‘Acknowledge it.’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘Well, then. I have sent my servant spirit to look for the boy, but it is no more than spirit. Your obedience will be required tomorrow. Prove it to me then.’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  She resumed her laborious struggle along the dark rough path. The manner of her walk – crouched, leaning heavily on the staff, sliding her feet beneath her – gave the impression that she didn’t trust her legs to keep her upright. ‘You are certain no one else has entered?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘What of the man who came to the well? Whom the dryad struck?’

  ‘Hairy man.’

  ‘Yes. He has not returned?’

  ‘Ran off. Last I saw. Can’t say now.’

  ‘Once I am within, watch the woods. If the old man wakes while I rest, see that he does not leave the house. Let no one enter.’

  ‘Cold,’ it muttered. ‘Dark.’

  She raised her voice. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘I must not be obstructed. There may be dangers here.’

  They went on in silence. The gorse and thorns grew thicker beside the path as they descended.

  ‘I must not be,’ she whispered. ‘The world needs me, in its death throes.’ One hand strayed to her chest again, where the small thing hanging on the silver chain bounced against the front of her padded jacket. ‘For this I overcame death.’

  The shadow had fallen a few steps behind. ‘Bad time,’ it croaked softly. ‘Poor girl.’ A gust of wind rattled the spiked branches above and the words went unheard.

  Part V

  Wednesday Morning

  Twenty

  Horace was already awake when his mother came upstairs. He felt like he’d hardly slept at all. He rolled over and closed his eyes, waited for her to come and sit at the end of his bed.

  ‘Time to wake up, small boy.’

  He feigned bleariness. ‘Is it?’

  ‘It’s seven o’clock. I have to go early. Everything is ready for you downstairs.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘Do you have anything special today?’

  His secret was glowing so hot it made his cheeks burn. He rubbed his face. ‘Just a normal day.’

  She patted his legs under the duvet. ‘All right. Work hard. Don’t be late.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘I might still be with Professor Lightfoot when you get home. You can just come and knock on the door.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘She must have come back late. The car is there. I put a note through her door.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You have everything you need?’

  He didn’t mean to, but he snuck a quick glance at his keychain on his desk. That was all he needed. Even if what he was going to do today meant that she took the key away in the evening and never gave it back, he had to have it until then.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  He was amazed she couldn’t actually see his secret flaring inside him. Maybe I could pretend to be ill, he thought suddenly. When she finds out I didn’t turn up to school today. I could say I felt ill on the bus. Mum liked it when people were ill, it gave her a chance to fuss even more than usual and make weird drinks. All he’d have to do was get back before she did. Then he could say he’d come home and been in bed all morning.

  ‘Mum? What are you doing today again?’

  She stood up, sighing. ‘Mrs Standish and then Mrs Ambell. They are both outside Falmouth. I have to take two buses.’

  ‘Right, but aren’t you coming back here?’

  ‘Yes, I told you.’

  He tried to sound casual. ‘So what sort of time?’

  ‘I told Professor Lightfoot about two o’clock. It depends if Mrs Ambell will drive me. Why are you asking these questions? You don’t usually ask these things.’

  ‘Just wondering.’

  She looked as if she was going to ask him something else, but then Horace’s desk clock caught her eye. ‘I should hurry. The bus might come early. These drivers always go too fast.’ She kissed him quickly on the top of his head. ‘Have a good day.’

  ‘Yeah, I will.’

  ‘It’s going to be a nice day.’

  ‘Great. Bye Mum.’

  He sat on the edge of the bed, listening to her making her usual overcomplicated preparations for leaving the house. Finally he heard the door swing open.

  ‘Bye, Horace!’

  ‘Bye,’ he called.

  ‘Don’t be late!’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Bye!’

  The door clicked shut and the house went quiet. He heard her walking away, up the lane.

  His hands were tingling and his breath felt short. It was like the feeling he got sometimes before an important game for the school. Not nervousness. He didn’t have anything to be nervous about. He left that to the other kids. No, Horace knew he was going to be the hero.

  But he’d never been this kind of hero before.

  Anyone could be a hero in football. Well, anyone as good as him, not that there was anyone as good as him. But this was different. This was like an adventure story. The kid who’s actually a secret agent.

>   He was going to save Marina from the spy.

  He went over to the window and moved aside enough of the net curtain to get a good view of the house opposite. The car was still there. He couldn’t see any signs of life inside, but then Professor Lightfoot always kept her blinds tight shut even when she was home. Everyone knew she was completely mad.

  So what was that kid who’d pretended to be Marina’s cousin doing there?

  Horace had lain awake hours after his bedtime trying to come up with a theory. Nothing had made much sense, except for one feeling he was sure of: the kid was some sort of impostor. Horace told himself he’d known that all along. Right from the start there was something dodgy about him. He could tell as soon as he’d seen the kid come out of Miss Clifton’s house, looking shifty. And then the kid had got himself in with Marina and made it so she didn’t listen to Horace any more. And now it turned out he was involved with the mad old cow opposite. They must be planning something, the two of them.

  He’d had some ideas in the night about what it was, but now that daylight was coming – cold clear blue spreading upwards, drowning the last few stars – they all seemed a bit unlikely. Never mind, he thought. He was going to find out the truth.

  He got dressed quickly, settled down at his desk, and watched, and waited.

  Low sunlight poured in through the picture window in the kitchen.

  ‘They’re promising us a whole day of this,’ Hester said. ‘According to the forecast.’

  Gav fiddled absently with a breadknife. He wasn’t at all hungry.

  ‘Sure you slept OK up there?’

  It wasn’t the events of the night that felt like a dream to him. It was all this: the kitchen table and its plastic tablecloth, wooden butter dish, white plates, a packet of cereal, the humming fridge, the crumbs on the counter, the arc of condensation in one corner of the window, the phone with its cord dangling loose. He sat among them like a visitor from another planet. He thought he could still smell the night in his clothes.

  ‘Gavin?’

  ‘Gawain,’ he corrected, automatically.

  ‘Sorry?’

  He made an effort. ‘Nothing. Slept fine, thanks.’

  Hester studied him thoughtfully. ‘You do know you can stay, don’t you? As long as you like. I should make that clear right away. Whatever else you have to worry about, don’t worry about that.’

  He half smiled. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Means a lot.’

  But he couldn’t.

  He couldn’t stay. He could tell just by looking around that he didn’t belong here, with the cereal, the loaf of bread, the phone, all of that. He had somewhere to go, somewhere where everything was different. He had someone to find. An ocean girl.

  ‘I think I’ll go for a walk later.’ Hester was happy to be the one making conversation. ‘Shame to waste a day like this.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘My first day of freedom.’

  It took a while for that to sink in. When it did, he looked up at her.

  ‘A new dawn.’ She gestured at the rich sunlight. ‘It could hardly be a better day, could it?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, thinking of his goodbye kiss. ‘Yeah.’

  Hester came and sat down at the table opposite him. ‘I’m aware that this isn’t a very helpful question,’ she said, ‘but. Are you all right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She wrinkled her brows, making her look even more professorial than usual, then shrugged. ‘Fair enough. Sure you aren’t hungry? You know, you’re like the anti-teenager. Up before nine and not wanting anything to eat.’

  The anti-teenager. The anti-person. He knew exactly who he wasn’t. Why hadn’t he asked Miss Grey who he was, when he’d had the chance?

  There were so many things he should have said to her. A lifetime’s worth, all now wasted.

  ‘She’s gone,’ he said.

  Hester didn’t try asking what he meant. She just watched him with sympathetic attention and then patted his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘’s OK. I think . . .’ He wouldn’t have tried to say what he thought, but Hester’s steady look drew it out of him. ‘I think it was time.’

  ‘Ah.’

  In the silence the fridge buzzed.

  ‘So will you go home now?’ Hester asked.

  Gav couldn’t help a snort of laughter. ‘God, no.’

  She waited a while, then tapped the table as if a decision had been reached and pushed back her chair. ‘Good. Then why don’t I run you over to Pendurra and we can pick up your stuff? You had a bag, didn’t you. When you’re ready. And after that we can just . . . take it from there. All right?’

  Back to Pendurra, yes. He’d lain awake a long time after going back up to his nest among the cardboard boxes, wondering whether he had the courage to return. In the daylight, with butter-yellow sunshine drenching everything around him, the idea seemed a lot less daunting.

  You must go and find it . . . Across sea and land, on the other side of the night, where an ocean girl tends it. Pendurra was across the river. A new morning had come. And the name ‘Marina’ had to mean something like ‘of the sea’, didn’t it?

  So, yes, back there. But not to pick up his stuff, his bag with the wallet and the keys. He was finished with all of that. He’d gone past them. Now he had to go past the other things, voices in the dark and silhouettes in sickly firelight and black mouths breathing fire, until he found Marina.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’d be great. Thanks.’

  He helped her tidy away the breakfast he hadn’t touched, listening while she chatted, infinitely grateful that she never seemed to expect anything more from him than the occasional ‘Mmm’. When she went back upstairs to the bathroom, he looked in through the other door. The front room was shady, the shutters still tightly closed the way he’d left them before going back to bed. Light from the kitchen fell in along the near wall, picking out the ridges and protrusions of the masks, sending dramatic shadows into their recesses. He saw the long blunt wooden one, the great saucer of its eye, the carved line that made its mouth, the crude strong curves like breaking waves. It was hard to guess what beast it represented, but when he closed his eyes he remembered traces of its song and felt he knew it, a wild surging water thing, though he still couldn’t name it. He reached for the light switch to get a better look.

  Nothing happened. He clicked the switch a few times, up and down, up and down. Nothing.

  ‘All ready?’ Hester came down the stairs and saw him in the doorway. ‘Ah. You don’t want to go in there unaccompanied? I can’t say I blame you. Here, I’ll go first. They’re used to me, they won’t bite if I’m there.’ She bustled past him, flicking the switch he’d tried a moment before. The lights came on at once. ‘There we are. Now, if you just look down and run for the door, you’ll hardly— Oh!’

  Surprised by the genuine alarm in her voice, he followed her look.

  At the end of the row of masks on the near wall, right beside the window, there was a conspicuous gap. A nail angled down over a scab of flaked plaster, and there was a dusty outline on the paint.

  Gav felt suddenly queasy.

  ‘Well,’ Hester said, ‘that’s strange.’ She crossed the room and peered at the floor.

  ‘What?’ Gav said, although he knew what.

  ‘It looks like I have an escapee.’ She didn’t look amused at all. She felt around the sofa, pushing it back.

  ‘Missing one?’

  ‘Yes. The black dog. One of the more unique ones. “More unique”, sorry, what a ghastly solecism. It’s a Finno-Baltic totemic object. Rather valuable, actually.’

  ‘The black dog,’ he echoed, now feeling cold as well as nauseous.

  ‘Am I just not seeing it? This is ridiculous. It can’t have fallen far. It’s a wooden mask. Looks rather like a bad-tempered wolf. It can’t just have vanished.’

  ‘Um . . .’ he said. ‘What do you mean, totemic?’

  She paused her search to glance sha
rply at him, still holding the pot plant she’d been looking behind.

  ‘Well, it’s a rather technical issue. We can’t be sure, of course, but it certainly had the kind of function that we’d call ritual, or religious. It’s not just an image of a dog, put it that way. Not like a statue. It’s to do with maintaining a relationship with the spirit world.’ She put the plant down. ‘Opening a door. The mask is a sort of vehicle for a spirit. Or a dwelling place. Or a mouth.’

  A mouth dripping fire. A mouth snarling with fury.

  ‘Do you know something about this, Gavin?’

  ‘Gawain.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  He focused on her, avoiding the hideous memory. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You don’t know what happened to it, by any chance?’

  He only shook his head.

  She raised her eyebrows wryly. ‘But . . . ?’

  ‘I . . . ah. You may not be getting it back.’

  She looked at him for a long time before shrugging mildly. ‘That would be a pity,’ was all she said.

  It became suddenly clear to Gav how patient she was being with him. She was, quite obviously, waiting for him to shed his tongue-tied surliness and let her into his confidence as gracefully as she’d admitted him to hers. The problem was there was nothing he could tell her. He had no language for it. Your mask came alive in the night and breathed fire and attacked my imaginary friend, but I drove it away and it ran off into the dark and now I don’t know where it is. With a stab of awful grief he remembered how Miss Grey always kept silent (except in his dreams, the sweet unbearable dreams). And then when she spoke he’d thought it was only raving. He felt the truth boiling up inside his closed mouth. If he parted his lips, out it would come; he’d be telling Hester everything. She’d never believe it or understand it. Not even her. Not even if she wanted to. No one could.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, seeing the distress in his face. ‘Don’t worry about it. Later. OK? We’ll talk about it later.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said feebly.

  ‘Come on.’ She took his arm firmly. ‘Let’s go for a little drive.’

  Back there, he thought, as he followed her into the car. I’m going back. I’ll be standing there again, in a few minutes. He’d have to figure out some way of getting rid of Hester once he arrived. Then he’d have to figure out . . . everything else. Find Marina. You must.