Advent

  With a roar the room erupted in heat and smoke.

  The blazing log had fallen at the entrance, beneath the green curtain, which had abruptly caught fire. The monstrosity sprang straight, twisting round. Its arms thrashed, throwing a picture off the wall, knocking over the fire irons, smashing the glass front of a cabinet, sending a high shelf of books raining down on Gawain’s head. A foul-smelling layer of grey-black smoke began drowning the room from the top, filled with scattered sparks. Gawain crawled away from the cascade of books and saw that the tree-thing had fled. Smoke already stung his eyes, but he made out its huge shape rushing past the burning curtain, furniture scattering like shipwreck behind it. Its flight unbuckled the appalling fear that had paralysed him. His brain was suddenly racing. There was paper everywhere and it would all burn, in moments, and him with it. It happened that he’d crawled beside the very stack of paper he’d rested his tea on, that other morning which now seemed unthinkably long ago: right in front of his face he saw GAVIN, doubly underlined, the tea stain circling it. The envelope was already spotting with heat.

  Smoke trickled into his lungs. He flattened himself on the floor, coughing. He felt the fire like a solid thing, an embrace. He recognised it from somewhere: its patient hunger. His thoughts flashed back again to the other morning, when he’d stirred the ashes and woken embers. The fire had answered him then. It had known him.

  Now he knew it.

  When roused, it ate; he understood that, all at once, as though it was obvious, a thing he’d always known. He couldn’t make it stop. That wasn’t in its nature. But, outside, he also knew the snow, stilling, light-fingered, inexorable.

  Flares of brilliant yellow surrounded him in the smoke. Scraps of paper rose on the boiling air and went tumbling around the room. Even as the backs of his hands began to scorch, Gawain slowed his breath, closed his eyes and curled into a ball on the floor.

  He reached past the fire, out into the open air. There he felt the snow falling, blanketing everything it touched. Its vast silence was something he understood. He found where that knowledge was in him. Hush, he told the fire.

  Hush, hush.

  Hussshh, came a sound in his ears, a deafening hiss that faded into a long whisper. Shhhhhhh.

  He opened his eyes.

  Smoke drifted in a glistening grey cloud above a glistening grey room. The glister above came from beads of steam. Below, it was ice.

  The fire was gone.

  Every object in the room was lined with a delicate mantle of frost. The blackened edges of half-consumed books were tiered with it; the broken remnants of upended chairs sparkled with it, like the spars and rigging of a clipper ship abandoned in a polar sea. Some stray fibres of the curtain were still threaded limply together. The sudden frost had made a spider’s web of them, dewy with ice.

  Gawain stared. He wasn’t sure whether he’d saved the house or ruined it. He did know, however, that it was him who’d done it.

  There was neither sight nor sound of the tree-thing. Perhaps he’d destroyed it, or driven it away. He stayed crouched in the corner, listening to the moan of the wind, watching the entrance to the room, just in case. Nothing.

  There beside him was his old name, scribbled on the back of an envelope. The paper was glazed with a transparent film of frost, like a leaf on a hard winter morning. Beneath it he saw Auntie Gwen’s letter, the one he’d stolen from Mum’s desk and read on the train. Where sparks had fallen the letter was charred, his aunt’s writing defaced as if by black raindrops. He brushed at the spots, remembering quite suddenly something Miss Grey had chanted in the carriage. His mother’s sister is flown. His mother’s sister is gone. A hole had burned through the paper in the place where Aunt Gwen had sketched herself smiling.

  This is the kind of place, it said at the bottom of the sheet, that really might be perfect for him.

  He folded the letter away into his back pocket, and the envelope with her scribblings as well. Two small fragments of her life, saved from the glistening ruin. His handiwork.

  He thought, Who am I?

  Horace knew he was tough. He’d always been the little kid, and on top of that he’d always been the Chinese kid, so pretty much the first thing he’d learned in school was that he was tougher than he looked. Nobody picked on him for very long. This was what he kept telling himself as he squirmed his freezing limbs, forcing them into motion. I’m tough. I’m not like the soft kids. It’s just a snowstorm. I can do this.

  He rolled over onto his side and got his arms and legs chafing against each other. Moving his fingers was like trying to operate a clumsy puppet. He wedged them down between his thighs to get some warmth into them, though the pins and needles made it feel like he’d stuck them into a pan of boiling water. Once he could work his hands properly, he sat up and tugged out the hood of his coat. The snow was a patient roar around him. The blanket the angel had given him slid off. He saw a glint of metal inside it, like a button, and fumbled around with it, puffing on his hands, until he worked out that it had a clasp on two of its corners. Oh yeah; she’d said. My cloak. He worked out which way round the cloak went and draped it over himself, fitting the clasp at his neck. It was warm and thick, made of some sort of dark wool. On the inside it was more or less dry. Pretty stupid-looking, but he wasn’t going to worry about that now.

  His memories were fuzzy. He’d been in a hurry. Had to find Marina before some other boy did, that was it. He’d knocked himself out somehow and had a bad dream. Anyway none of that mattered yet.

  He’d never seen snow like this. You couldn’t see five metres. But he wasn’t going to panic, no way. All he had to do was figure out where he was. Crazy how you couldn’t even guess. But he had to be around Pendurra somewhere.

  It couldn’t even have been snowing for all that long, because in the patch where he’d been lying you could still see the tops of blades of grass. Come to think of it . . .

  He scuffed a patch of snow away with his foot. Then he cleared a bigger area.

  Weird. The ground was flat and even, the grass smooth. Not like being in a field at all, fields were always lumpy and tussocky. It was more like . . .

  A lawn. The lawn! Now that he pictured it, it was obvious. He was in Marina’s garden, he must be. There was nowhere else with even ground. He pushed himself up to his feet, legs wobbling and stinging. It was hard to keep his balance with the crazy wind swirling around and the snowflakes like tiny bullets. He braced himself and shielded his eyes. He knew his way around this garden like his own house. All he had to do was work out which bit of it he was in. Maybe he could go and check on Marina. Maybe her dad would even invite him in the house, let him see the inside. In this weather and the state he was in. Stupid of me to get knocked out, he thought. Must have banged my head on a tree or something.

  A tree. Or something.

  Just a nasty dream, he told himself, shuddering. Let’s get moving.

  There were small shallow footprints nearby, already filling in. He couldn’t really tell which way was which, but it didn’t matter much, come to think of it. The garden wasn’t that big. If he just picked a direction he’d hit something he recognised soon enough. Might as well follow the footprints.

  A shiver of doubt assailed him as he started. Who, he wondered, goes wandering around barefoot in the snow? That bit hadn’t been a dream. What was it the angel said to him, something about a long journey? What was an angel doing here anyway? There were no such things.

  At once he was far less sure of where he was. The snow was coming down really hard; he could have been anywhere, or nowhere. I know what I’m doing, he told himself stubbornly, but even so he felt a huge flood of relief when a shape appeared ahead and he saw what it was: an apple tree. One of the old, twisty, tangle-branched ones that were dotted around the garden. Many times he’d snuck across the lawn to pocket their surprisingly sweet fruit, or watched from the edge of the trees as Marina clambered around comically in their branches. With a surge of inward triumph he recognised th
is particular tree. I know exactly where I am, he thought. It’s like I have a sixth sense.

  Quite suddenly he heard an angry voice, not far away. It jolted the self-satisfaction out of him at once. He ducked instinctively behind the trunk.

  As he did so, it was as if a soundless wind swept past him, clearing the snow away like a brush going through dust, leaving perfectly clear air. Inexplicably, magically, he found himself inside a scene like a reversed snowglobe; the whirling flakes were all on the outside of an invisible bubble. Within the dome everything was impossibly sharp and still: the bare tree with its crooked branches, and he, cloaked and hooded and crouching behind it, and, in the snowy plain beyond, the two women.

  It was something out of a dream, but this time Horace knew for sure he wasn’t dreaming, and, what was worse, he also knew all at once that his bad dream earlier hadn’t been a dream. His courage collapsed. Terrified, he clutched the bark and prayed he was out of sight. But he couldn’t stop himself inching his head to the side until he could stare with a single fear-widened eye at the women beyond.

  One had her back to him, but he knew her at once by her bare feet and the untidy rags she wore. The other, taller, head to toe in black as usual, staring at the dishevelled angel with a look that dried Horace’s mouth and withered his heart, was Miss Clifton.

  It was her, but it wasn’t. Horace was too numb with shock to work it out. All he could see was that Guinivere Clifton was standing there in her black boots and her baggy black skirt and her rumpled black leather jacket with the silvery patterns on it, but in her face was an expression that was never hers: hard, hunted. She had some kind of big stick too, and she was holding it like a club.

  Every detail was crystal clear. The weird bubble they were in was illuminated by an unaccountable radiance. The air almost shone. Horace could hear every word too, but – and he’d had dreams before where this had happened – none of the words made any sense.

  This was because they spoke to each other, as they always had, in Latin.

  ‘I am who I always was, Johannes. Perhaps I forgot for a time, thanks to you. But thanks to this woman, I have remembered again. She brought you back and so she brought me back. See, I have waited for you again.’

  At least the angel sounded like an angel, Horace thought. He had no idea what she was saying, but the tone was solemn and calm. She stepped a bit further away from the tree and Miss Clifton turned to keep facing her. Now he could see them both in profile: the angel with her curtained head tilted up, the other wearing her own face like a death mask.

  Miss Clifton’s voice was even worse. It was barely her own voice at all. It was like she’d forgotten how to use her tongue and her lips, and had to force the nonsense sound out from somewhere in the back of her throat.

  ‘The woman knew nothing of what she did. There is no wisdom here. The world has emptied of it. Your time is finished. You are long forgotten. You know it yourself.’

  ‘What of you, then, Johannes? Do you imagine you belong here?’

  Horace saw Miss Clifton gesture widely, a sweep of her arms. It seemed to cost her a lot of effort, as if her own body was too heavy for her to move properly. She’d never been the most graceful person, but now she looked as if she was half crippled. He shrunk tighter against the bark.

  ‘I will learn. I will teach! I am magister, the wise man. It is my fate to bring wisdom back to this world. As it is yours to be forgotten.’

  The angel paused for what seemed like an age before answering. Time had stopped for Horace anyway, except for the rapid pounding of his pulse in his ears. None of this could be happening, none of it. He watched it like a film, like something behind a screen, not really true at all.

  ‘You deceive yourself at last, as people always do.’

  ‘I have nothing more to say to you. You should have died twice a thousand years ago. You are an unquiet spirit. What have you waited for so long?’

  ‘For you to return what you took.’

  Miss Clifton twitched, and her left hand went to her breast. Horace saw that instead of her usual pendant, the little black-and-white yin-yang symbol she always wore, something different dangled from her silver chain: a plain brown hoop. She spoke sharply. ‘You gave it! You gave it freely.’

  ‘You mistook it, Johannes. You desire the gift and not the burden, but the gift and the burden are the same. In your heart you know it is so. It is a heavy burden, to be both mortal and spirit, to see truth, not to die. Heavier than you know. It will fall hard on you.’

  ‘Do not prophesy, witch!’ The horrible alien expression in Miss Clifton’s face turned to anger. Her mouth could have been dripping poison. ‘Do not prophesy to me! You are no prophetess here. Your temples were ruined centuries ago. You know nothing of this world! You have long outlived your fate. Do not presume to tell me mine!’

  ‘It is a fearful fate, Johannes.’

  Miss Clifton bared her teeth and snarled.

  ‘Then be grateful to me!’ She spat out the gibberish words like daggers. ‘I deliver you to your fate now, a mercy!’

  ‘Yourself, Johannes? You will strike the blow yourself?’

  To this, whatever it was, Miss Clifton could answer nothing. The angel spoke again.

  ‘I do not remember what made me wait for you those thousand winters, but I waited. Remember that, as you strike the blow.’

  Miss Clifton winced and shuddered. When she spoke again, there was a dreadful bitterness in her voice.

  ‘I loved you. I do not deny it. But look.’ She spread her hands at her sides. ‘Now I have a woman’s flesh. I cannot tell how this woman unbound my wards. No woman could be so great a thaumaturge. Perhaps time did the work for her. Yet the woman has given me an unthought-of gift with her womanhood.’ The voice chilled Horace to his bones. ‘She has taken away a man’s love. And a man’s restraint. And a man’s reason.’

  ‘Your fury is all yours, Johannes. None of it is hers.’ The angel’s voice had changed too: colder, sharper. Though she was a head shorter than Miss Clifton, she suddenly seemed twice the other’s size. ‘Your pride is all yours too. Yet whatever you say, you must return my gift. It is mine to bear still, and mine to bequeath. You knew that, once. Why else did you try to conceal it?’

  Miss Clifton drew herself up stiffly. ‘You have never understood what you bore. Not in all that legion of years.’

  The angel woman spoke quietly. ‘No. No, I have not.’

  ‘I am wiser. I know this ring’s worth.’ Miss Clifton folded a hand over the pendant. ‘Do you know what I will do with the ring?’

  ‘I do, Johannes.’

  ‘I will restore to this world everything it has lost. I will throw open the doors and welcome the life of creation back to this withered corpse. I . . .’ Miss Clifton coughed, heaved in a breath, straightened herself. ‘I am the resurrection and the life. That is your gift to me.’

  ‘I spurned the god and this is how he cursed me. You cannot heal the world with a curse, Johannes.’

  ‘Those gods fell long ago. They are nothing but empty words now. And you, Cassandra, should have died with them. Why do you go on?’

  ‘I never chose my burden.’

  ‘Then rejoice that I bear it instead.’

  ‘You cannot.’

  The hand covering the plain brown pendant shook. Whatever crazy language they were talking in, it was obvious they were arguing about it.

  ‘I have and I hold.’

  ‘No. You do not. You never had the strength to bear it.’

  Miss Clifton gestured angrily with the stick. ‘Shall we have a trial of my strength, witch?’

  ‘You must give it back to me.’

  Horace gripped the trunk tighter as the angel unfolded an arm and held out an open hand, palm raised. His breath dried up. He saw what she wanted: the thing that was strung on the silver chain round Miss Clifton’s neck. It was like the film had reached its climax. He knew some terrible significance hung on what would happen next. The taller woman still clutched
the ring with her free hand, covering it. The angel kept her palm out, unflinching, perfectly still.

  There was a very long silence.

  Miss Clifton said something slowly. ‘You put it in my hands. Yourself, long ago.’

  ‘Because you loved me, Johannes.’

  Maybe it was a trick of the weird impossible watery light, but for a moment it looked to Horace like Miss Clifton was crying.

  The angel spoke again. Her tone became intensely commanding and Horace found himself urgently taking her side. Horrible things would happen if the wrong person won.

  ‘The door is open again and the world will suffer for it, but that burden is still mine to carry. Give me my burden, Johannes.’

  Miss Clifton spasmed visibly at these last words, then sagged.

  ‘You must know what I have decided.’ It was a broken whisper.

  ‘Will you do it yourself?’ said the angel. Her outstretched hand had still not wavered. ‘Will you end me by your own hand?’

  Miss Clifton heaved the stick up over her head to strike. Horace almost cried out, saved only by the terrorised astonishment locking his tongue. But the stick wavered in the air. It was too big and heavy for her to swing. Her arm wobbled clumsily. She lowered it back to her side, leaning on it, gasping. Horace felt an almost unbearable relief as he watched her other hand lift the chain off her neck. It’s going to be OK now, he told himself. It’s going to be OK! The angel won! He felt like cheering as he saw Miss Clifton hold out the ring on the chain.

  Her eyes were closed as she dropped it in the angel’s hand.

  When they opened again, the fury had reappeared in them. She stepped back as the angel’s fingers closed over the ring.

  She spoke with dreadful menace. ‘Not by my own hand. Nor will I stay to see it done. But what I have decided is decided. Call it prophecy, Cassandra. Call it fate.’

  The angel only lowered her arm and looked away.

  Miss Clifton twisted round and shouted something into the air, some kind of wild command or curse, or maybe just a scream of defeat. But it doesn’t matter, Horace thought; she lost; it’s over. And sure enough, she walked away – not her proper walk, but a weird gait, as if she was going on artificial legs, using the stick to balance. She shambled right out of the bubble of clear air, passing through its invisible wall without a pause, disappearing into the snow.