Advent

  Five hundred years earlier any village grandfather anywhere in all Europe could have told them it wouldn’t last. You didn’t need to be as wise as the magus to know that human creatures and those other kinds of beings could never pretend they were the same. The tales of their unhappy conjunctions were part of the folk-knowledge of every household where stories had ever been listened to. But in the last decade of the twentieth century there was no one to tell Tristram what was coming. By then it had become a rule that fairy stories always had happy endings. It was part of what made them not true. That was the kind of fantasy Tristram thought he had entered, as if the ring was a magic wishing ring that had granted his desires, and no questions asked.

  But the ring was still a burden as well as a gift. Swanny sickened, gradually, not so much in body as in spirit. She loved her spouse and her daughter with a fierce devotion, but she could not continue year by year to pass as something she was not. That was another simple rule known to the ages before magic was forgotten. The ones who crossed too easily from one nature to the other were vampires or werebeasts or the like, monstrosities who no longer had their own life at all and lived by eating others’. Swanny began to disappear to the sea for hours, and then for days. She couldn’t say why, but Tristram didn’t need to ask.

  Marina did, though. By now she was a child just turned two and they could all see that she wanted her mother like any other child. Worse, they had to answer her crying and pleading when Swanny was gone.

  Tristram and Swanny stayed awake together from one dusk to the next dawn, and by morning they had admitted to each other what needed to be done. It broke him irreparably. They could only hope, together, that Marina would recover, but they knew it must happen before she was old enough to remember the day that eventually had to come.

  The last thing Swanny did before going back to the sea for ever was to take off the ring and put it in Tristram’s hand. He shut his eyes tight so he wouldn’t have to see her leave. Then he couldn’t bear to open them and look at the empty space where she had been, so he sat, howling in grief, the smooth cool circle crushed tight in his fist.

  It was still there when Guinivere finally came into the room and gently eased him to his feet. She saw the way he held it unthinkingly, like a lifeline. By the next morning, though, it was gone. Unable to endure the sight of it, needing to blame something for taking away his happily-ever-after, he had gone out secretly in the night one last time, the ring once more alongside the sheathed mirror in the box with its silver clasp, and locked them all together in the shrine that had been built centuries before in honour of the ring’s bearer.

  This time, however, it was not lost. The prophetess’s gift had returned to the world, albeit marred and unrecognised. Through it she knew herself again, despite her half a thousand oblivious years. She knew something else too. The world was about to change again, the most cataclysmic change of all: she felt it coming. As if waking from a coma, it would have to face everything it had forgotten.

  There was only one thing left to wait for, and she felt that coming as well. Her burden could not be bequeathed to this new world until it was first put in her hands again. And that could only happen when he who had taken the ring from her came back, at long last, to return it.

  Twenty-two

  ‘Hey! hey, help her out!’

  Gawain barely registered the yell from the beach. He bent down to the woman in the water, not sure if he’d heard the whisper or imagined it. It was almost impossible to distinguish the sounds her mouth made from the scratching of tiny wavelets at the edge of the river. The eyes blinked, transforming the face for a moment into a beautiful ivory mask. Inexplicably, he had the feeling he knew it from somewhere.

  ‘. . . her to the water . . .’ His blood thrummed in his ears.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  From behind, from another world, someone shouted, ‘For God’s sake, don’t just . . . Hey!’

  ‘. . . oar lock,’ came the whisper, perhaps. ‘I saw her.’

  At the edge of his vision something was approaching. He ignored it. He couldn’t have lifted his eyes from the face in the water if his life had depended on it. He crouched right down onto his hands and knees.

  ‘. . . where my wedding and . . . I saw . . .’

  ‘Out the way!’

  Eyelids closed slowly and the face sank down, gathering its trailing fringe, sucking it under. The jetty shook and clanked as footsteps ran up behind Gav. ‘For God’s sake,’ a woman was saying, ‘let me . . .’ The steps came beside him and stopped as the voice trailed away.

  There was nothing below, not even a shadow.

  ‘What the bloody hell?’ The accent belonged well north of where they were. Gawain got to his feet, still holding his shoes in his hands, and saw a flustered woman with a harried face, panting hard, staring back and forth between him and the river, her expression in the middle of changing from frantic urgency to angry confusion. ‘Did she drown? Did she go under? What’s wrong with you?’ She dropped uncomfortably to her belly and stuck a hand down into the water.

  ‘No one drowned,’ Gav said.

  ‘There was a girl in the water, I saw it! What happened? Where’s she gone?’

  ‘There wasn’t a girl.’

  ‘I saw you bend down!’ She was shouting quite loudly now. The man who’d pushed off in the inflatable, and was now transferring himself into one of the moored dinghies, stared at them across the harbour. ‘Why didn’t you help her? What the hell were you thinking?’

  ‘Nothing’s there,’ he said, remembering the words you were supposed to use from all the times his father had said them to him. ‘See for yourself.’

  The woman stopped splashing her arms around in the water. Gawain held out a hand. After a long pause she took it and hauled herself to her feet. ‘Then who . . . ?’ She scanned the shallows and shook her head before rounding on him again. ‘Then what were you doing? I saw you talking. I saw a face.’

  He only shrugged.

  The woman’s agitated expression changed to an odd kind of fear and Gawain had an abrupt premonition. He was going to have to get used to seeing that face.

  ‘She can’t have just . . .’

  Gawain ignored her. Something else was stirring, some other memory. Something about a white face and green hair.

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ the woman muttered crossly, and stalked back down the jetty.

  Now the dinghy was heading his way, the man in its stern sculling forwards. He caught Gawain watching him and stared back, too intently, from between a peaked cap and a heavy beard. Suddenly feeling surrounded, Gawain turned to escape. As he looked around, his gaze ran across the ranks of bare trees on the opposite shore, mute ancient guardians gathered around the hidden house, and he stopped as still as if he’d turned into one of them.

  He remembered where he had seen the face in the water before.

  The woods, the house. The lodge above them. And in the lodge a room littered with Auntie Gwen’s jumble, and in the room (he closed his eyes) a single black-and-white photograph. And in the photo a smooth, round-mouthed, almost luminous face: the same face – gentler and warmer, but in its perfect symmetry and its sculpted clarity definitely the same – that had just emerged from the water to plead with him.

  A white woman with green hair.

  ‘Hoping for the ferry?’

  He’d blanked out completely. He hadn’t even noticed the dinghy nudge against the jetty. The bearded man stood up in it, fingers on the tiller, eyeing the mooring cleats.

  ‘What? No. No, I . . .’

  He felt rooted to the spot. All his instincts told him to get away, from people, from questions, from disbelieving and disapproving faces. One barely audible whisper held him in place: Find my child . . .

  Something Auntie Gwen had known.

  ‘Noticed you checking the sign. Don’t run in the winter. Out of season. Place is a bloody zoo in the summer though. Need a ride?’

  The man looped a rope round a cleat and e
ased his boat tight to the dock. A dirty white sail lay folded in the bottom of the hull. Gawain saw the name painted on the stern, straddling the rudder: Nymph.

  ‘Hop in if you do. Wind’s come up a bit, should be able to sail. Only take a couple of minutes.’

  The sailor’s eyebrows were as dense as his beard, and the peak of his cap was pulled right down over them, so all Gawain could see of his face were unfriendly eyes that gave nothing away.

  ‘That’s . . . um.’ The breeze seemed to have words in it, faraway but urgent: . . . her to the water . . .

  ‘Long walk otherwise. That or wait till spring.’ The man nodded towards a perch in the bow.

  He’d come here to try and cross the river. Why was he even hesitating? ‘OK. Thanks, then.’ Gav lowered himself in clumsily, still holding his shoes, and sat with his back to the mast, knees cramped tight. The man pushed off with an oar and began unfolding the sail, causing a lot of alarming wobbling. They floated surprisingly quickly away from the dock, the surface of the river close.

  And under the surface, out of sight, the white woman with her snaking green hair. The secret Marina had wanted to tell him. I’ve never told anyone this before. He’d been so tightly wound up in his own misery he’d barely listened at all. Now he couldn’t remember what she’d said. He’d shut her out, the way everyone had shut him out, but she’d told the truth.

  ‘Seen a woman in the water, did you?’ the man asked, as casually as if making a remark about the weather.

  The rustling and grunting and wobbling carried on behind him, and now he could feel the wind tugging at the boat. Tiny curling waves appeared under his feet. Trapped in the bow, Gav gripped the gunwales, closed his eyes and cursed himself.

  ‘Don’t like to talk about it, eh?’ The man hauled on a rope, pulling the sail jerkily up the mast. It flapped around like a huge dying fish. Gav gave silent thanks for the racket it made, sparing him from having to say anything at all.

  ‘I can understand that.’ The boat twitched and leaned like a living thing as the man pulled something tight and settled in the stern. They slid between the dormant boats on either side.

  ‘Often think I should have done the same. Should have kept my bloody trap shut. I’d still be out here every day, though.’

  This sunk in slowly. When Gawain at last understood, or thought he understood, he couldn’t help twisting round to stare at the man. The sailor gazed levelly ahead, hand on the tiller, as if his passenger wasn’t there at all.

  ‘Fifteen years I been looking,’ he said. ‘Maybe today’s the day. Might see her again now you’re here.’

  Horace stopped at the forking of the roads.

  He’d let the other kid get too far ahead. Stupid! Now he couldn’t be sure which way his quarry had gone.

  But then – he took off his cap and fidgeted with his hair – what difference did it make, when you thought about it?

  He grinned. All that mattered was him getting to Pendurra first. And that was going to be cake. He’d have got there first even if the old nutter’s car had been working, but now the kid was on foot he had all day. All he had to do was go down to his boat, cross over, find Marina and tell her everything he’d seen. She probably wouldn’t believe him, but he’d make her. Go on then, he’d tell her, show me where he is. Your ‘cousin’. Bet you won’t be able to find him anywhere here. And when he finally shows up and won’t tell you what he’s been doing, say the name ‘Professor Lightfoot’ to him and watch his face. Professor Lightfoot. And when he asks how you found him out tell him it’s ’cos Horace saw through him. Horace knew he was bad news. Horace found out what was going on and came to warn you. Should have listened to me all along, shouldn’t you? Know better next time, won’t you?

  He strolled down the overhung lane towards the river, rehearsing this conversation over and over again in his head, imagining what Marina would say. I’m so sorry, Horace. You were right all along. I’m so glad you came to warn me, Horace. You saved the day.

  He heard a raised voice from somewhere down by the pub. He didn’t particularly want to run into anyone. If he was going to come up with some brilliant excuse later on, he didn’t want Mum finding out he’d been down here by the river. He ducked into the lane that led to the car park above the pub. From there he was high enough above the roofs of the holiday cottages to check out most of the beach. It looked safely deserted. The only thing moving was freaky Mr Frye’s boat. Nymph. What a gay name for a boat. Course he’s there, Horace thought, with a small inward sneer. Mr Freak. Goes out every day ’cos he’s crazy. Thinks he saw a mermaid once and keeps trying to catch it or something. Mental. He’d heard Mum talking about it.

  Hang on. Someone sitting in the bow?

  Horace shaded his eyes against the reflected brilliance of the water and peered. The small dinghy with its dirty white sail veered round, moving into open water beyond the moorings. The sail swung abeam, blocking his view of the front of the boat again.

  No. Couldn’t be.

  Could it?

  He tried to tell himself he must have imagined it. It had only been for a second. Hard to see anything anyway, with the sun like that.

  But now, as he skidded back down the wet grass and hurried out into the lane again, the awful logic of it loomed clearer and clearer. The professor was a headcase and she had something to do with it. Miss Clifton was basically OK, but definitely off the deep end, and she had something to do with it. And now that psycho Mr Frye.

  A conspiracy. A conspiracy of freaks.

  He ran down to where the lane opened out to the river. The boat was more than halfway across already. It was stern-on to him and he still couldn’t get a look at anything in front of the mast. There was a funny light in the sky too, an odd haze, as if someone had thrown the thinnest of veils over the morning.

  The dinghy eased towards the opposite shore, heading for the ferry landing. It swung round to nestle against the stone steps. Now Horace could see that there really was a person squashed into the bows. The person stood up and climbed ashore. For a second or two, as he turned to say something to the man in the boat, his profile was clear to Horace’s keen eyes even at that distance.

  Horace grabbed his bunch of keys from his pocket and sprinted across the beach.

  Out of the corner of his eye Gav noticed a small dark figure running along the opposite shore, but he was too busy trying to figure out what to say to the man in the boat to give it any thought.

  ‘Well,’ he tried. ‘Thanks again.’ Not Yes, she was really there. Not No, you didn’t imagine it. Not I know what it’s been like for you. How did you even start to say things like that?

  The bearded man swivelled himself forwards and made some adjustment to the sail. The wind was stiffening.

  ‘Nympholepsy,’ he said, as he fiddled around in the dinghy. He sounded out the syllables one by one.

  ‘Er . . . sorry?’

  ‘Nympholepsy. Word I heard a few years back. Judge told me that was my problem.’ The man looked up. ‘Know what it means?’

  Gawain shook his head.

  ‘Dictionary definition: “A state of rapture, supposedly inspired in men by nymphs. Hence, a frenzy of emotion inspired by something unattainable.” I had to look it up. Dictionary don’t say if it’s curable.’ The current gradually pulled the boat away from the steps where Gawain stood. ‘Cost me my wife and kids, pretty much everything except Nymph here.’ He patted the gunwale in front of him. ‘Think I’ll ever see her again?’

  He wants my help, Gav realised, finally. If I tell him yes, he’ll probably sail away happy. Gav could see all of this in an instant, written on the man’s obdurate look.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  The sailor turned away, blinking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gawain said, to his back. Then, louder, as the sail filled and the dinghy leaned away, ‘Thanks!’

  He didn’t want to see a grown man crying, so he started quickly up the steps. What was he supposed to say to everyone? Hell
o, did you know there are fire-breathing dogs in the lanes and mermaids in the seas, but don’t ask me how or why or what we’re supposed to do about it, now have a nice day?

  But Marina spoke his language. Gawain hurried through the village, his eyes on the wooded slopes above. It couldn’t be that far to the ridge at the top, where the gate was. He saw a road curving uphill, but he didn’t want to take a route anyone else might be using if he could help it.

  Just as he had that thought, someone came out of a tiny house right beside him. He looked down quickly to avoid any eye contact and saw that he wasn’t wearing his shoes.

  Stupidly, he stared at his empty hands. He recalled tucking his shoes down in the bottom of the dinghy. He’d never picked them up again. How could he not have noticed? His feet were streaked with earth.

  ‘Good morning!’

  He glanced up in confusion towards the elderly woman at her front door and saw her eyes travel down to his feet and up again. That look began to spread over her face. ‘Ah . . . chillier than they said it would be, isn’t it?’

  ‘A storm’s coming,’ he answered, and walked away. He had no idea what made him say it. Until the words had come out of his mouth he hadn’t known it was so.