Advent

  But the morning was indeed darkening, and as he hurried between the motley windows and eaves he heard the valley behind the village beginning to hum to the music of a cold wind. He put his head down and trotted on. His bare feet seemed not to feel the pebbles of the road. He found a sign for a footpath leading straight up the valley behind the village, into the trees. The path was concrete at first, but as the houses shrank to tiny terraced cottages and then gave out altogether, it became packed mud, kneaded with old bootprints. Branches closed above it. He watched his feet as he walked. He knew he ought to be wondering how he was walking on the rough roots and loose stones without his shoes on, but there was no one to answer that question either.

  He walked on, the old track beckoning him ahead like a bent arm, in among a faded tapestry of ferns and bark and the brittle rust of fallen leaves. He came to a junction marked by a wooden post. It seemed like a good excuse to sit on a flat stone and check the map, though the real reason he stopped was that as the light dimmed and the trees turned restless, he was suddenly in less of a hurry to get where he knew he had to go.

  The map showed the footpath leading up through the wood towards a crossroads at the top of the ridge. The entrance to Pendurra was just a little east of where the roads met. Maybe a mile away, a mile and a half. He’d be there soon, very soon, and then . . .

  A crackling in the undergrowth made him look up.

  Something like a big animal was moving through the brambles and ferns. Gawain’s heart ballooned against his ribs. He’d thought he was completely alone. The shambling thing was the size of a bear.

  He stood up, tipping the map off his knees into the mud.

  It pushed its way through the trees until it showed itself to be a man, crouched and shaggy, matted with leaves, coated in earth. Gav picked up a length of fallen branch. His hands wouldn’t hold steady. Something Marina had said jumped from nowhere into his head. The thing that wasn’t called a woodlouse. It’s a wild man who lives in the woods.

  The wild man saw he was there, straightened and stopped.

  It was Caleb. He must have spent the night in a hole in the earth, but it was still just about identifiably him. His stare was like an animal’s; there was barely a trace of the human left on him, his straggling hair thick with the litter of the winter ground and all the rest of him lathered with mud. Gav gripped the length of wood more tightly.

  Caleb twitched, then came on towards the path. Now there was an unmistakable hostility in his approach. Gav glanced back down the way he’d come, but he couldn’t make himself start running, not back to the village where people might be. He tried telling himself there couldn’t be anything to be frightened of. It wasn’t very convincing.

  The man looked unhinged. He crashed through the screen of branches and came out onto the path, his hands still thrusting aside imaginary obstacles.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  Gawain lowered the stick, but not all the way.

  ‘What . . .’ Caleb began, limping a couple of steps down the path towards him. ‘What . . .’

  Gawain tried to say something. Not a sound came out.

  ‘What . . . you . . . done?’ Abruptly Caleb broke into a run and lunged at him, swatting the branch aside. Gav tried to duck away, but Caleb got hands to his jacket and heaved him close. His hair and beard stank like fur. ‘What you done? Eh?’ Gav wriggled his hands onto the man’s arms but couldn’t push him away. ‘What you done?’ Caleb let him go with an angry shove.

  ‘I haven’t—’ he began, but Caleb leaned over him and roared, the pitch of his voice more grief than anger.

  ‘Was all right till you came! Now look!’ He gestured furiously at nothing.

  ‘Caleb?’

  ‘Why don’t you . . . jus’ . . .’ His mouth worked silently, then clamped shut, and he dug his hands deep into his filthy hair.

  ‘Caleb,’ Gav said carefully, in the abrupt silence. ‘What’s happened?’ But the man only swayed from side to side, grimacing. Gav straightened slowly. The earth felt cool and heavy under him, woven through with its web of dormant roots, studded with old rock. ‘What’s going on?’

  Caleb twisted away. Gav saw that his clothes were scratched all over, as if he’d dragged himself through a bramble patch. What he’d thought was a shambling crouch was actually an injury; Caleb was holding an arm against his ribs, wincing as he turned.

  ‘All gone mad,’ he whispered.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘We was all right before you came. Now what’ll happen?’ Caleb banged his fists against his knees. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Caleb?’ But the man was deaf to him now. Gawain could have just stepped round him and gone on his way, leaving him crouched and whining.

  Instead he said, ‘I’m going back there.’

  Caleb’s head whipped up. The wild eyes were now full of fear.

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Don’ make it worse!’

  ‘Worse? Worse than what? Caleb?’ The man was shaking his head and backing away. ‘Is Marina OK? Tell me what happened.’ Fragments of bark and leaf dropped from the shaggy head. Gawain wouldn’t have been surprised to see a vine grow out of Caleb’s mouth, like one of those carved heads in old churches.

  ‘It’s all come back,’ he said. His eyes darted around the wood. ‘Everywhere. Ah. Hurts to cough.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘You did!’ Knots of caked hair fell over his eyes as he glared up again. ‘You happened! And then everything come alive! All in the—’

  And then he was holding completely still, listening.

  ‘What?’ Gav said, suddenly far more nervous. Caleb had frozen as if someone or something had appeared on the path right in front of them, but Gav couldn’t hear anything beyond the trees’ bleak whistle. ‘Caleb? What?’

  ‘One of them,’ Caleb muttered, and peered up.

  ‘One of . . . ?’

  ‘Coming,’ Caleb said.

  Gawain’s mouth went very dry. He looked around, panic rising.

  ‘Looking for you,’ Caleb added hoarsely, and his eyes peeled wide.

  Now Gawain’s heart was juddering so hard he could scarcely breathe. Caleb backed away from him, down the path.

  ‘Caleb, listen.’ The man was shaking his head manically. ‘Where’s Marina? Caleb! Is Marina OK?’

  Caleb’s only answer was to spin round with a gasp of smothered pain and run limping towards the village.

  ‘Wait!’ There was sweat on Gav’s hands, already turning icy. A hollow sound rushed overhead, deeper than the wind’s hissing malediction. He looked up instinctively and caught a blur of shadow in the corner of his eye, blanking the trees; when he turned to follow it, it was gone. He reached down for the branch he’d dropped, trying to force some of the wood’s firmness into his hands.

  Above the trees the shadow reappeared, moving, so dark it sucked the weakening light out of the day. It grew. It was no shadow; it was solid, a mass of blackness, spreading as it descended. He curled his toes into the mud to stop himself bolting, trying to remember how he’d stood up to the hideous dog. This is what I’ve got to do now, he tried to remind himself. You must. This is what I’ve got to get past to find her.

  The trees above cracked and shivered as the black thing plunged through the branches.

  Twenty-three

  Unlike more or less everyone else in what had for hundreds of years until that day been able to think of itself as the rational modern world, Gawain had not grown up with the instinctive sense that there was an absolute difference between possible and impossible things. He’d been baffled and astonished often enough by the previous forty-eight hours, but he’d never had to confront something whose mere existence he couldn’t accept. So when he looked up the path and saw by the full light of day the thing that alit there, he didn’t pass out or lose his grip. He was witlessly terrified, the terror of the cracking ship or the crumbling bridge, but the fear was pure, there was no madness in it
, and his utter determination not to flee held long enough for him to survive the first unspeakable moments and so recognise what he was looking at.

  Its squat blunt head jerked from side to side. It opened a sharp black thing, part mouth, part beak.

  ‘Hairy man gone,’ it croaked.

  Gawain clutched the branch, squeezing the blood out of his fingers. The beast stood on the path ten paces ahead of him.

  The aspect of it that was not manlike was, as he’d guessed in the dark of the chapel, all raven or crow. It watched him with eyes like polished stones set in a black head. It stood like a man, but stiff, awkwardly upright, balanced on legs that narrowed to leathery sticks and ended in gruesome talons, four claws splayed over the earth. Gawain saw the spindly arms that had lifted him as easily as if he were a baby, and the finger-claws that had gripped him. The arms flexed and bent at strange angles, making a mass of blackness behind them shiver and compress.

  ‘You go too,’ it added. The head twisted again, each unblinking eye taking its turn to stare at him. ‘Go back.’

  Out here in the open air, the voice sounded brittle. It worked its throat uncomfortably to make the words come out, the beak stabbing at air.

  He licked his lips and swallowed. No stammering now.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Danger. Go back.’

  ‘Hello, Corbo.’ He couldn’t look into its eyes. Their stony brilliance was too predatory. He didn’t like to look at the cruel beak. He tried to fix his gaze on its broad chest.

  ‘Hello hello.’

  ‘Have you come to stop me?’ He wondered about fending off those talons with the branch he’d dropped. It seemed unlikely.

  ‘Avert.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Avert.’ The neck twisted back. ‘Warn,’ it said, with effort. ‘Bad ahead.’

  Gawain swallowed again. ‘I . . .’ He heaved a deep breath. ‘I can’t go back.’

  ‘Turn about.’ Corbo demonstrated, hopping and spinning a full circle. To keep its balance, it spread its arms slightly, the wing-feathers opening behind them. ‘Go down.’

  ‘No, I mean . . . I have to go on.’

  ‘Says who.’

  ‘I do. I just have to.’ You must. He wasn’t sure what he was saying. If he’d stopped to think about the fact that he was having some kind of conversation with this thing, his head would have spun into irreversible disarray. He concentrated on the feel of the ground beneath his feet.

  ‘Bad ahead.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Not where. Who. Danger ahead.’

  ‘Danger? What? How close?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘What . . . what kind of danger?’

  ‘Bad kind.’

  ‘I mean . . . what is it? What’s wrong? What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Well, OK, then.’ A monster in my path, he thought. This is who I am now: Gawain, battling monsters. ‘Then I can’t go back. I have to go on.’

  ‘Did before.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did before. Ran. Ran away, aaaaark. Ran ran ran.’

  Gawain flushed. He felt himself being mocked, though Corbo had left every word as flat and toneless as ever.

  ‘That was yesterday,’ he muttered.

  It watched, remorselessly inexpressive. It wouldn’t fill anything in for him. There were no unspoken exchanges with a thing like this. A question, Gav thought. Come up with a question. It always answers me.

  ‘Why are you helping me?’

  ‘No use. Don’t listen.’

  ‘OK, but why? Yesterday, in the chapel. You let me go, I know you did. You could have stopped me. Right?’

  ‘Paid for it.’

  ‘And you said you wanted to leave too.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Right?’ he prompted.

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘Who’s doing this, Corbo?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Ask ask ask, kkraaa.’ Its beak-mouth squirmed and snapped. ‘Waste time. Go.’

  ‘Won’t you . . .’ Gawain swallowed. ‘Won’t you get in trouble?’

  Corbo shook out its arms abruptly. A ridge of feathers ruffled open on each side, shivering with a noise like rattled twigs. Gawain flinched as the thing swayed, suddenly lighter on its feet, its head stretching up and then swinging down.

  ‘Bad enough now. No worse. Stuck like this, caaark. Feather and filth. Day and night. Hot, cold. Hungry, wraaaak. Hungry.’

  The feathered arms unfurled fully, a huge black curtain, and beat the air in agitation as if trying to shake themselves loose. Gav threw up his hands and was saying, ‘No, don’t, sorry—’ but his voice was lost in the rush of noise. Its clawed feet scratched at the earth. It thrust its neck towards him.

  ‘Go. Last chance.’

  Stupidly, Gawain could only think of the woman in the village. I can’t go back there, he thought. I haven’t got any shoes on. Someone might see me. ‘I can’t!’ he yelled back. It twitched; he almost thought he’d surprised it. ‘I can’t go back,’ he went on, desperate. ‘OK? Or how will I ever find out? I can’t just . . . run away.’

  The hard bright eyes stared back.

  ‘And, um, I don’t think you can stop me.’

  ‘Wwrrrkkk,’ it said softly, wings settling.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘Why, Corbo?’

  It fidgeted before answering. Was he imagining it or did it suddenly look shifty? ‘Soon learn.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Likely.’

  ‘OK, because, um, I want to know. I need to find out who I am.’

  ‘Told you. Stupid boy.’

  ‘Yeah, but apart from that.’

  ‘Aaarrk.’ It hopped from foot to foot. It made two gargling sounds that sounded like they were meant to be syllables but made no sense to him, unless maybe it was trying to say, ‘Gawain,’ while swallowing a frog. ‘White Hawk,’ it carried on. ‘Go on then. Up to you. Say you come. Have to. Have to tell.’

  Up to me? he thought. Corbo backed a little up the path. Suddenly it looked ungainly, bedraggled, defeated.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘If I can.’

  ‘Too late. Holly came.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Caaaark, listen. Stupid boy.’

  ‘Who . . . Is Holly the one who—’

  It shivered its folded wings and interrupted. ‘Soon see. Snow coming. Get inside. Forward, back, up to you. Go. Man there.’

  A muted flash lit up the trees. Gawain spun round.

  There was someone on the path behind, a middle-aged man, an ordinary man. Under a blue woolly hat, his face was white as paper. He held out the phone he’d just used to take a picture. Corbo’s wings filled the woods with a sound like a waterfall and it clattered through the branches above, vanishing behind the canopy.

  Gawain and the man stared at each other.

  Without moving his jaw, the man said, ‘What the hell was that?’

  It had never occurred to Gawain that someone else might be there. This never happened. He had his two lives and they never overlapped. No one shared both with him, not even Auntie Gwen, who’d probably wished she could. That was how it worked. People were like his parents: they didn’t want to know. Looking into this man’s face, Gawain saw something he’d never seen before: the wreck of his two worlds colliding.

  One of them, he saw, would sink.

  ‘It’s called Corbo,’ he said. The man didn’t blink, but his eyes slowly turned towards the obscured sky. ‘You probably shouldn’t go this way.’

  The man just stood where he was, as if the power of motion had abandoned him, which at least made it easy for Gawain to start up the hill again, in the other direction. He pulled his jacket more tightly around him as a chill swept through the wood. Swinging the branch beside him like a staff, he h
ad the feeling he was tracing a fault line over the earth and behind him a crack was widening, the world crumbling into it in his wake.

  The river was increasingly choppy. Guts churning, Horace smacked the hull of his boat into each wave. I’m not far behind, he told himself. Only a couple of minutes. I’ll catch up. No way some city kid’s going to get there before I do. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and twisted the throttle on the outboard until the boat juddered and bucked as it skimmed the whitecaps. There was a speed limit on the river but so what. He didn’t care. Spurts of bitterly cold spray leaped up from under the bows. He saw freaky old Mr Frye’s boat heading out towards the open sea. Mr Freak. Hope he sinks.

  There was nowhere to leave his boat at the ferry steps, so he steered into the harbour. There were a couple of old farts up on the road, staring disapprovingly as he came in too fast, his wake setting the buoys lurching. So what. Let them stare. Everyone stared at him. The Chinese kid. OK, you two, here’s something to watch.

  He aimed the bow straight at the shingly foreshore where the stream opened out into the harbour. Just when it looked as if he was going to ram his boat onto the stones, he threw the motor into reverse. The grating screech of the engine filled the village and out of the corner of his eye Horace noted with satisfaction that the stares of the posh villagers had twisted into frowns. He swung the boat round sharply, holding his balance as it swerved and slowed, and waited for just a second as its shoreward momentum fought against the whining motor; then he flipped off the outboard, and, as the hull drifted inches away from the shore, vaulted out onto the shingle. There was not the tiniest scrape of fibreglass on stone, but the boat had come to rest close and still enough that he could push its stern back out and take hold of the painter without even getting the soles of his trainers wet.

  With all the insolence he could muster, he looked straight up at the people on the road and took angry pleasure at the speed with which they averted their eyes.

  No sign of the kid. He must have started walking up already. Horace looped the painter round the struts of the wooden footbridge that crossed the stream’s mouth, then marched up the paved road towards the ridge. He approached each corner carefully in case the kid wasn’t far ahead; he didn’t want to give himself away. The road climbed steeply between the harbour and the hillside houses – all deserted for the winter; they were all rich people’s second homes – and then curved round the shoulder of the hill. He couldn’t risk going too fast. The only thing he had going for him was the element of surprise.