“I can’t—”
“On me,” Colin said again. He handed some notes across the counter, and John rung up the order and passed back a handful of coins. Then Colin pulled out a chair from the nearest table and held it for her.
“You’ve put in a hard day’s work,” he said as they settled to wait. “I should pay you.”
“It’s my garden.”
“I guess there’s some that’d dispute that.”
His tone was light, but she saw again her cousin leaning against the wall of the pub, and she winced. “Let’s not go there.”
“Sorry. Bad joke.”
The two men finished their meal, and there was much scraping of chairs as they rose to leave. “Have a good evening, John,” one called. Again he exchanged nods with them. “Colin. And you, miss.” Then they had the shop nearly to themselves. From the back they could hear John whistling as he banged the fry baskets around.
The cod and chips came in paper—not newspaper, but printed to look like it. Colin poured vinegar liberally over his; Gwynn was a bit more conservative, shifting the paper cone from hand to hand, as it was hot.
“Night, John,” Colin called as they left. “Cheers.”
Full night had fallen in the short time they’d been inside the chippy. The streetlights glowed, each with its own nimbus, leading the way down to the harbor; they followed the lighted path, again Colin taking the outside of the pavement.
“Everyone knows you,” Gwynn mused.
“Small village.”
The sound of the tide grew louder as they crossed the small stretch of grass to a deserted bench. A handful of seagulls scattered before them, skittish, but then turned and watched suspiciously, small pale ghosts under the street lamp. Gwynn sat, trying to see beyond their circle of light onto the shingle, and out to the water beyond, where she knew small fishing boats bobbed on the swells. The smell on the cold air was salty, vaguely fishy. A seagull approached warily, but took a few fluttering steps back when she turned to him.
“You grew up here?” she asked, dipping into her paper cone for a chip. The fish was still too hot to eat.
From his jacket pocket, Colin drew a handful of napkins and held them out. Gwynn took one gratefully, and tucked it under her leg on the bench to keep it from blowing away.
“I did.”
“Why aren’t you a fisherman?”
“Can’t swim.”
She couldn’t tell from his voice whether he was joking.
“Have you always lived here?”
Colin held up a finger, mouth full. “Went to university away. Bangor. Read linguistics.”
Gwynn glanced at his profile curiously.
He lifted a brow. Waited.
“It didn’t take?” she asked at last.
“Oh, I liked it. Didn’t fancy myself a teacher, didn’t know what else to do with it. Then there was a girl. Back here.”
The sirens went off in her head. Of course. There was always a girl, wasn’t there? How old was he? The silvering at the temples suggested early forties. Most men of that age were unavailable.
“That didn’t take,” he said, eying her face in the angled light cast by the street lamp. He shook his paper packet, peered down into it, pulled out a last bit of cod. “Since you ask.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Your expression asked.” He laughed, licked the salt and vinegar from his fingers in a way she found vaguely disturbing, so she looked away, toward the black water.
Gwynn was surprised to notice that her cone of fish and chips was nearly empty. One last chip. When had she eaten them all? She pulled the napkin from beneath her leg and wiped her hands. Colin took the wrapper and tossed it a few feet into a waste basket.
“You? Husband at home? Children?”
“No husband. No kids.”
“Thought so. No ring. Means nothing, of course, nowadays.”
“He died. He left a small construction business. I ran the office side until I got an offer of a buy-out from a bigger company. Then I sold it.” Why was she saying this? And to him? “Now I’m trying to figure out what else I can do instead.” She wasn’t ready to talk about Belinda’s drawings.
Colin nodded. “The house came at the right time.”
“Yes.”
An odd shadow had grown up to their left, lumpen and misshapen, with two heads. Gwynn looked up and saw the moon rising in the east. Not quite full. Bright. She looked down again, held her left hand out before her and watched the shadow do the same.
“And that may be how I spend the rest of my natural life,” she said. “Pulling up brambles in that back garden.”
Colin took the crumpled napkin from her and tossed it toward the basket; this time, it fell wide. He stood to retrieve it from the grass and dropped it in before speaking.
“Maybe,” he said quietly, “we’re not supposed to pull them up.”
The air was growing colder as the night and tide moved in on them, but it was the words, and his tone, which made the chills run along her spine.
ALL UPHILL, THROUGH the village, up along Eyewell Lane past The Stolen Child, and up the path onto the tiny terrace. The stones underfoot rang as though hollow, the cold autumn air throwing back the echo of their steps.
“I wish you’d stop that,” she said at last.
“Pardon?”
“Speaking so prophetically.” Her hands, even stuffed into her coat pockets, were cold. “First it’s the gate: maybe we’re not supposed to open it. Now it’s the brambles: maybe we’re not supposed to pull them up. What’s that all supposed to mean?”
Colin shrugged in the darkness, and she sensed the movement more than saw it. She wished she’d thought to leave a light on in the front window, to welcome them back to the house. There was a swell of noise from the pub as the door opened and closed; she looked down to see a couple linking arms and heading off into the night. Not Paul Stokes this time. Not those unfriendly black eyes watching her every move.
“I’m not sure.”
“That’s a help.” She fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and in the darkness, dropped them on the flagstones, where she heard them skitter away into some dead leaves. She cursed softly.
Again the shrug. “Really. I just don’t know. There’s something—strange—about the whole situation.” He bent down. “Here, let me.” More rustling in the dead leaves. She really had to sweep the front terrace. Before Mary came and decided that as a house owner, Gwynn was definitely a lost cause. In a moment Colin straightened, key ring looped over his index finger. “When I pried open that gate, the sound it made—remember? Like a moan, or a cry. A warning.”
“Now you’re being fanciful,” she said impatiently. Then stopped, remembering the stench in her nose, in her mouth.
“Probably,” he agreed without rancor. “It’s just that I don’t like the feeling of this house. That’s all.”
“It’s not the house,” Gwynn protested.
“I know, I know. You said the house was sad. I don’t agree.”
The conversation was making her nervous. Anxious. Gwynn could hear the peevishness in her voice, but couldn’t stop it. “So now I guess you’re going to tell me you don’t want to keep working at those brambles.”
Colin took her hand and set the key ring in her palm. “I think you know that’s not it.”
She curled her hand into a fist around the keys. “Then what?”
He sighed, looking up at the three-quarter moon. “I’ll come back tomorrow, if you like. Work all day at the brambles, if you like. But I think you’re going to find that it won’t make any difference.”
Gwynn stomped a foot in frustration, then turned away to jam the key into the lock. “That doesn’t even begin to make sense.”
“I know.”
“That’s all you can offer? ‘I know’?”
“I don’t understand it, either.”
Another wash of noise reached them, as more customers left The Stolen Child. They must have downed a few, f
rom the sound. Suddenly extremely tired, Gwynn pushed the door open and reached inside for the light switch.
“Listen,” she said wearily. “Do you want to come in for a nightcap?”
Colin laughed. A small laugh. “Probably that’s not the best idea. You’re exhausted and edgy—”
“I’m not edgy—”
“—and you should probably just go on up to sleep.”
Gwynn thought, in the light from the front hallway, that he was smiling slightly, at least with that tiny quirk of the lips that passed for a smile with him.
He bent down and kissed her cheek. “And do not—I repeat, do not—check on those brambles tonight. Tomorrow morning will be soon enough.”
She let herself in, then locked the door behind her. She got to the front sitting room window just in time to see the work truck pull away from the curb and head down Eyewell Lane.
16
AFTER SHE’D BRUSHED her teeth and donned her pajamas, Gwynn returned to the sitting room for her great-aunt’s book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. True to form, Mary had tidied it away, back to its erstwhile home on the bookshelf. Gwynn knew she should be searching for something lightweight, something she didn’t have to think about, something that might give her pleasant dreams. Fairy tales in the original didn’t always do that—but she knew she was looking at that book for another reason.
She hadn’t forgotten just how grisly the stories could be. Her great-aunt’s book was well-worn, the green binding faded to a soft spring pastel. The title was stamped in gold: Fairy Tales Old and New. Not too new, obviously; and as she thumbed through the yellowed pages, she remembered just how little these had to do with their Disney counterparts. The line-drawn illustrations, which she studied curiously, were not comfort-inducing. She paused at one page, where a burly hunter in a feathered cap was busily carving up a wolf with an axe, blood spurting. How could parents read these to children? Unless it was to steel them for the hard cold cruelties of life ahead.
She snorted at her fancy and flipped through another couple of pages, to Mary’s bookmark.
Another illustration, this of a crumbling tower, surrounded by and perhaps choked by a thicket of wild, thorny brambles.
Just like mine, she thought wryly.
Gwynn shifted the page back and began to read. Sleeping Beauty, the cursed princess who pricked her finger on a spindle and fell into a hundred-years’ sleep. Over time the thicket of brambles grew up and hid her castle from view, and no one could penetrate the thorny overgrowth.
Just like mine.
There was a happy ending to this fairy tale, of course. After the hundred years, a prince came to fight his way through the thorns and awaken Sleeping Beauty.
This was the point where Gwynn thrust the book aside and turned off the light. That part wasn’t like hers, that was for sure. Her former prince was dead, by his own hand. As attractive as Colin the wood man was, she didn’t need another prince—and Colin couldn’t fight his way through the brambles anyway. He had even admitted it.
With her hand to her scratched cheek, Gwynn fell asleep.
Part II
Fairy Tales
17
SHE WASN’T AFRAID, Gwynn told herself.
For some time after Richard’s death, she’d dreamed of the apple orchard, the looming trees with their low-hanging skeletal branches, reaching for her, always reaching for her. In those dreams she’d feared them, and everywhere she’d turned, there had been another. The cold, gray, scaly bark. The occasional fruit, well past its season, which clung to a branch like a tiny yellow shrunken head. The dream knowledge that something terribly wrong, terribly evil, was just out of sight along the path. In these dreams she knew she could not turn back—could never turn back. In these dreams she knew that all paths led to a horror.
But the dreams had faded. She had not had the nightmare of the orchard in years. And she was not afraid now, she told herself. Still, the day was cold, and she pulled her coat more tightly about her, pulled her sleeves down over her hands. The dead leaves crunched and skittered underfoot, the bones of the dead summer. She shivered and forged her way on.
There was blood on her hand, she realized suddenly, feeling the trickle between her fingers. The thorns had scratched at her, again trying to hold her back. She didn’t even pause now, but walked on, holding the scratch to her mouth. She wouldn’t think about the blood. She wouldn’t think about the brambles. She wasn’t afraid, and she would look inside the dovecote.
Don’t.
The voice was Colin’s, soft in her head, but with some urgency. Gwynn had let him convince her to come away that other afternoon, but she would not be swayed today.
The clearing came as a surprise, as it had the first time. In the center of it hulked the low barn, its beams worn, the ragged canvas hanging like a black distress signal in the window. There was no sound. The dovecote was black with age, the roof sagging slightly in the middle, and menacing, like a monster prepared to leap. Gwynn shook herself, a hand to her breast. It was not a monster. It was not a hulk. It was a building, old, abandoned, and unused for ages. She was simply going to look inside; she would not go into its bowels too deeply, not with the way the ridgepole sagged. She was curious, she told herself, but not stupid. She patted the flashlight in her pocket. Reassurance.
There was no sound. The clearing, as she crossed it slowly, was silent. No birds. Perhaps they were disturbed by her presence. Well, she would not be here long. Just long enough to look, long enough to prove to herself that, despite the chills the place gave her—it was simply abandoned, and she was simply suggestible, and there was nothing more to it than that. Despite the urgency in his voice when Colin had told her to leave the door alone—she was master of this, her own property, left to her by her own great-aunt, for reasons she would probably never understand. She pulled the flashlight out and flicked the switch, turning it up to look at the bulb, which glowed slightly orange. No doubt the batteries were weak after all this time; she’d simply have her look around, and put batteries on the shopping list when she’d returned to the cottage.
Gwynn hadn’t brought the remains of the penetrating oil, because, as she remembered, the door here was not latched, and in fact hung slightly askew on its hinges; there was probably no need of it. Now she put a hand to the wood and pushed gingerly. The bottom plank was driven into the ground by its own weight, and at first it resisted her. She pushed harder. The crack widened. Slowly. With an ugly dragging sound. She glanced down and saw the arc it traced in the dirt. She shoved even harder, and suddenly the door swung open to slam against the inside wall. She nearly fell into the dimness.
The flashlight beam was indeed weak, yellow instead of the strong clear white of full power. Gwynn cursed herself for not checking the batteries back in the kitchen. A thin pale rectangle of light fell at her feet from the grey day outside, and though she shone the hopeless flashlight beam further into the dovecote, it took a few moments for her eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness.
Cages lined the walls at the edges of the light, their occupants long gone, their doors, for the most part, hanging open like hungry mouths. Patches of rotten hay were scattered over the dirt floor. She shone the light overhead and it picked out the great black beams that crisscrossed beneath the sagging roof trusses. Dust motes filtered their way past, into the beam and out again like flurries. The mustiness made her sneeze, once, and again.
Deserted. Gwynn had no idea what had so spooked Colin. Or why she had allowed herself to absorb his uneasiness. There was nothing here.
She turned slowly, looking at the dove boxes, at the beams overhead. Everything was deathly still.
A slight movement of air touched her cheek. There was a creak behind her. She spun, and the flashlight died.
“Who’s there?
Gwynn shook the flashlight, retreating quickly toward the pale rectangle of daylight on the floor. Impossibly, the door to the dovecote swung shut.
No, it didn’t. She blinked, confu
sed. Took a quick panicked step.
Gwynn stumbled, fell to her knees. The flashlight beam, reviving, gave out a feeble light. She looked up, and for a moment thought she saw feet. Swinging gently in the movement of air, the toes barely dragging across the dirt floor.
With a strangled cry, Gwynn scrambled toward the door. She clawed at it with her fingers, and then threw herself out into the clearing, into the air, away from the creaking darkness.
18
“HE DIDN’T WANT a care home,” Mary said, unlocking the front door of the semi-detached cottage with one of her many keys. “Can’t blame him, though it surely would make life easier for the rest of us. Didn’t want to come live with us, either.” She pushed open the door and stepped into the entryway, calling. “Dad? Hello?”
There was a weak shout from the end of the hallway. Mary shut the door behind them and led the way forward until they reached the solarium at the back of the house. It was crowded with furniture: a sofa, a reclining chair, a large-screened TV. The view was into a garden where the shrubs were wrapped up in burlap for the winter, as though in heavy coats. On the sofa, a whip-thin old man, shrunken into a dark green bathrobe, leaned against a mound of cushions. Gwynn had the impression he’d just taken his feet off the coffee table before they came in, but couldn’t quite pinpoint why she thought that.
“Dad,” Mary said briskly, setting aside her purse and unbuttoning her coat, “I’ve brought you a visitor.”
He had brilliant blue eyes, brighter even than the pillows against which he leaned. The eyes were huge in his bony face, like a bird’s eyes set above the sharp beak of his nose. He looked over Gwynn curiously. “Gwynneth Chelton’s niece, living up in Dove Cottage—excuse me, Gull Cottage. Never got used to the new name.” He eyed her curiously, measuring her up and down. “You’ve got her nose. And her chin. And those green eyes. But the hair’s not right.”
“Dad,” Mary remonstrated.
“Just an observation, girl,” Mr. Scott replied. He turned again to Gwynn. “She thinks I’m being rude. I think if I want to be rude at my age, I’ve earned that right.” He waved a hand toward the recliner. “Have a seat, young Gwynn. Mary tells me that’s your name as well. Hope you don’t mind me calling you by it.”
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