A forbidden land.
James felt his guts tighten up. In the twenty years since the End, the idea of returning had never entered their minds. Alex himself hadn’t even spoken of it since James had asked to know from where he had come, many years ago.
Now, Alex’s face was a tight mask, eyeing the dirty slumped glutton under the stable awning. They approached the rest of the way in silence, and the man sat bolt upright at the sight of them.
“Sir!” he exclaimed, spraying gobs of half-chewed bread at their feet. He bowed his head and scrambled to his feet, taking on an obsequious stoop and pulling an ancient fedora from his head, holding it to his chest.
“It’s all right, friend,” Alex said. “You have nothing to fear from me. Speak.”
Gerard bowed ever so slightly, gripping the brim of his hat a little tighter and flushing beet red. “All r’pect, sir, but I didn’t come here for you.” His eyes wafted among them until the others, even Alexander, had stepped away, and James alone was left in his gaze’s path. “You’re the Keeper? You swear on it, lest the End take you?”
As if to prove the point, a pigeon peeped into view from the guttering and dropped down onto James’s shoulder, pecking at his duster. “I am,” he said.
Gerard’s brows flickered. “They tell it up North like you’re som’in nigh on Odin: that you’re double tall as me and have a face like granite. You could be any man from Adam, by Christ.”
James shrugged. “I can’t prove anything.”
Gerard scrutinised him with a wry twist creeping into his lips. “No, it’s you. Tall tales, they told, the usual bull shite … ‘cept your eyes. They got them right. Green as a leaf in the summer sun.” He paused, and sighed. “‘Tis you.” He stepped forward and looked hard into James’s face. “‘Tis indeed … I got a message for you.”
James glanced at Alex, who was eyeing them with an unreadable expression. Lucian had loped to the side to join the others, looking unsettled and unsure. Norman huddled around his father’s legs, tugging on his sleeve unconsciously. Even Agatha and Lincoln, though they held their tongues, looked troubled.
Nothing like this had ever happened before. They seldom ever had visitors, let alone a wanderer from the far North.
“What is it?” James said, swallowing uncertainly.
The man looked suddenly nervous, his eyes darting to the others. “For you.”
“You can trust them.”
He didn’t look convinced. In fact, he looked wary. His eyes kept returning to Alex. “For you.”
James sighed and nodded inside. The man seemed grateful and stepped into the gloom of the stables. It was muggy inside, and James trudged through hay until they stood beside a pair of dark steeds, the fug of manure and unwashed horseflesh filling his nose. They settled in the midst of shadow and he met the man’s eyes again. “Well?”
The man was breathless. “You’ve been around that other one too long. Your path is set, Chadwick. You have a part to play.”
James recoiled. “What are you talking about?”
“The other one. The meddler. The one who might undo it all.”
“You’re talking about Alex …?”
“Him. He’s undoing things that mustn’t be undone.”
“We’re fighting to take back what we lost.”
“You can’t! If you do, we could lose everything.”
“We already lost everything, friend.”
The man laughed hysterically. “You have no idea … no idea how far this goes, how small this world and its troubles are. But all the pieces matter, no matter how small, and you’re one of them, Chadwick. Your path is set!” His eyes bulged from his head.
“I choose my own destiny, friend, and it’s here, with them—”
The man took a step forward abruptly, and his babble halted. “I’m sorry to have to do this …”
“What?”
James realised, too late, that his eyes had changed. There was something else in them: genuine sorrow, but also something else—no, someone else; a young man stood behind the bedraggled figure before him, a beautiful high-cheeked grinning prince with dark streaks under his eyes. “Forgive me,” he whispered, and before James could react, a pair of filthy spider-like hands were clapped around his head.
Pain arced in his skull as though a bolt of lightning had leapt between his ears.
He saw moorland, rugged heath and rolling hills, a single snow-capped mountain in the distance, all of it slathered in thick fog that poured into deep valleys and skated out across great glassy lakes. Towns were dotted here and there, great decaying things that had been old and dense with secrets long before the End had robbed them of life. He saw it all, every inch of plaster, heath, and rock in a single flash.
He had never laid eyes on that place before, but he knew it was Radden.
Then another bolt of lightning whited it all out, and he stood at the end of a stone tunnel stretching away into infinity. He was underneath the moors now, far down below where no gas line or rail tunnel could reach. Torches flickered, set high near the ceiling, and he was rushing past them at an impossible speed, hurtling around corners and along vast stretches, passing strange carvings, paintings, shadows of figures walking out of sight—some of them weren’t quite human.
A cavern appeared ahead, and he hurtled towards it until it opened out, revealing a long wooden table. Sat in a rickety old chair with his feet up on the table, arms spread wide in welcome, was the beautiful young man. The streaks under his eyes were like slicks of tar. “I’m waiting,” he said.
In a split second, James was being squashed, hurled, and rolled in ways a person cannot be rolled. The tunnel warped out of shape, groaning under some unseen strain, then the stone, the dripping dew, the flames, even the air, fractured, and he saw what lay behind it. He saw between the tunnel and other places, some light and some dark, some silent and some alive with countless whispering voices. All of them separated by vast distances, yet right beside one another, woven into a single tapestry, an intricate web tended to by—
James stopped spinning and rolling, and the other places vanished. Darkness once more, total dark this time. He sensed he was far away from his body now. Somewhere out of sight he could hear whimpering, fearful souls lost in the void—he could feel them, endless thousands, millions. And somewhere above it all, on a scale far beyond anything he could conceive, something swung back and forth. Back, and forth. Back and forth. Driving the clockwork of all existence.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
The young man’s voice spoke once more. “Hurry.”
Then heat, the smell of manure, and a soft neigh close by. James was breathing hard, staring into the wanderer’s eyes, which were now opaque, filled only with sorrow. His hands were covered with a smoking layer of frost, and James heard his hair crackle and a pinch of cold upon his temples as a film of ice evaporated in the humid stable air.
“What did you do to me?” he whispered.
“I’m sorry, mister. I did some bad things … bad things … He gave me a way to wipe my slate clean, but this was part o’ the deal.” He took a shuddering breath. “If I was you, I’d try to forget all this crazy. That’s my plan.” He swallowed. “But something tells me you won’t get the chance.”
James felt hollow, his innards thrumming as though his entire body had become a recently struck bell. He heard his own distant voice. “I think you should leave, now.”
The man didn’t hesitate, nor did he say another word. He trudged through the hay and disappeared outside.
James stood in the dark until the thrumming had settled, and strength returned to his limbs. Then he walked out into the sun, blinding after the total dark of wherever the man had transported him.
That was crazy. He didn’t remember Radden, only imagined it from Alex’s description. But what he had just seen had been no crude mental creation; he had seen every blade of grass and crumb of moss-covered mortar, smelled the dank fug of lichen and wildflowers, felt the moisture of
condensing fog and salt-laden sea air on his skin. It had been real.
The others were waiting to one side where he’d left them, unmoving and watchful. Norman was caged firmly between his father’s protective arms, his airplane hanging at his side. The wanderer’s cart was already passing through the gate, barrelling down the uneven road at a reckless pace to the sound of hollering and cracking whips.
“What happened?” Alex said.
“Nothing. He’s just some nut.”
Agatha frowned. “Y’sure, James? He looked like he’d seen a ghost or somethin’,” Agatha said. “Righ’ scare on ‘im.”
“I’m sure.” He shrugged, hoping his face wouldn’t betray him. “He just babbled a while and ran out.” James paused for effect. “He didn’t say anything more?”
“Just hopped on his wagon and off he went,” Lincoln croaked, shrugging.
“How did he know you were from Radden?” Helen said.
Hector cleared his throat, nodding to Norman. “Don’t worry the boy,” that cough said.
But she was heedless. “How could he know?”
“She’s right,” Lucian said. His eyes were fixed on James in a dead stare. Alex had fixed him with a look all too similar.
They see right through me. They know.
James was at a loss for words, mouthing openly. He thought he might end up standing there forever when Alex spoke up suddenly.
“You saw those sacks. He was a scavenger. Probably figured there was a whole lot of loot in Radden; nobody plunders No Man’s Land. I found James in a cottage on the outskirts of the county. His parents were gone but there was everything there you needed to know everything about them. He was probably just trying his luck, seeing if he could gain some leverage over us, make a quick buck.”
“How could he know some baby grew into Pigeon Boy, here?” Lucian said.
Alex’s confident smile flickered. “You’d be surprised how many people know his name. And the wind can carry names a long, long way.”
“Thanks to you in no small part,” James said. He tried a smile, but Alex’s face flickered even more, almost a twitch.
Is he mad at me? Did I just upstage him?
Nobody had ever come looking for someone besides the Messiah.
Nevertheless, the group visibly relaxed, the tension melting away. They watched the cart disappear into the distance, bouncing and jostling between the heads of wheat until it was nothing but a blur under the sun.
Lincoln and Agatha looked shamefaced. “Sorry to scupper the negotiations in Newquay’s Moon,” Lincoln said.
“T’was us who asked Lucian to call ya back,” Agatha said.
“We didn’t want to take any chances.”
Alex shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We did what we needed to do. Malverston agreed to our terms. We have full access to their lands and the outlying provinces. They’re even open to bulk trade with us, in time. It wasn’t ideal timing, being pulled away, but … mission accomplished.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’ll have to grease the wheels along the line to make up for bouncing from his preening party. But then again, it might just help us if he thinks he has one over us.”
James thought of Beth again. He wondered if she and her sister were in hiding right now, whether they had left Malverston inflated enough to quell his mean streak. He nodded along with Alex, but couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He wasn’t sure how he felt. The vision was still buzzing in his mind like a swarm of locusts.
Lucian was looking at him. “The guy was really a fake?” He looked troubled. “Damn. He was good. He had me fooled.”
“Crazy as crazy gets,” James said. For a moment, as he said it, he believed it. But he knew it was a lie; something had changed in him. Even now, he felt a strange sensation building in his lower body: an itch, an insistent prodding, pointing like an arrow away from the courtyard. He shook himself.
Lucian cursed. “He duped us. It sounds stupid but … he said some weird things during the night. Stuff about you being different, about you playing a part in some cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Babble, most of it, but there was something to it. It all sounded very … big. It was almost like he thought you had something to do with the End.”
The family turned and headed inside, turning their attention to the deal with Malverston.
James leaned confidentially towards Lucian. “That’s impossible.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Lucian gestured to the horizon, at the crumbling skyline of Nottingham, as though James could need reminding that, twenty years ago, over six billion people had vanished without a trace.
Yes, it was crazy. But so was everything about the world they lived in.
*
They sat down to a lunch of bread, cheese, and a stew of potato, mushrooms, wildflowers, and an exotic slurry of various meats—a creation of Agatha’s which Lincoln referred to as jungle stew. By the time they reached the table, stomachs were growling audibly, and the mysterious traveller was forgotten.
For a time there was silence under the roof thatched by their own hands, and they ate as only people who know the dangers of real hunger can eat: methodically, savouring every crumb and drop with unwavering gusto. The wood burner beside the table was small, and when they had dragged it from the wreckage of an old barn conversion a few miles away, it had been little more than a bucket of rust. But Lincoln had taken it into his workshop and set to it with all the wisdom of the Old World, and his practised engineer’s hands had restored it to shining beauty.
It warmed every cubic foot of air under the high roof without a hint of struggle.
James was forever in awe of Lincoln, and the few other professionals who had survived the End. They displayed true mastery—fonts of endless trivia and titbits of knowledge that books could never convey, that could only come from experience or be communicated between master and apprentice; things that were in true danger of becoming lost forever, if they had not already.
He had done his best to absorb the minutiae of his trade, but the majority passed over his head. He was a thinker at heart, not a doer. And Lincoln, though he had been among the founding members of the mission, was not taken to divulging his secrets; instead, his nuggets of invaluable skill seeped from him in dribs and drabs, often unexpectedly, and he grumbled like a man bothered by irksome children when pressed for a repeat performance.
Nevertheless, everything around them stood testament to his abilities; he had designed and supervised the renovation of every line and beam of the homestead. It had been a quaint old farmhouse when they had found it; now, it was a monument to their mission. Without him, and the continuous pillar of maternal strength Agatha had provided each day, they would have been lost.
“Small favours,” Alexander sometimes said. “The world may lie in ruin, but it’ll be saved by small favours.”
The others were out in the fields and wouldn’t be back until evening, and so they enjoyed a companionable lull, filling their stomachs and resting stiffened legs. Hector helped Norman fill out a page of arithmetic sums, patiently crossing out mistakes—a little too often for James to feel encouraged of any progress. Norman’s face was creased into a fierce frown of misery and confusion.
Finally, Lincoln smacked his lips and pushed his bowl away, steepling his fingers and leaning across the table. “So, Alex, put our minds at ease,” he said.
Alex swallowed and smiled. “Like I said, Malverston’s on board.”
Agatha, sat beside Lincoln, failed to suppress a coy smile. “Sometimes I can’t help but think he imagine us some kind o’ foolish.” She sighed in Lincoln’s direction.
He hummed assent, and their eyes met. “Fools, indeed.”
Agatha turned her gaze upon Alex, then James. “Wha’ did you two have to promise tha’ bag o’ slime to win ‘im over?”
Alex sat quietly, folding his hands before him, chewing slowly and swallowing with an audible glug. “We’re going to teach them,” he said.
&nbs
p; “Teach them what?”
“Our ways, what we’ve learned about how to start over. We’re going to start a school. Here.”
Everyone jerked as though an electrical current had been passed through the table. James gaped and turned in his seat, staring into Alex’s deadpan expression. “What?”
“How could you agree to this without consulting us?” Lincoln hissed.
“Alex, this is …” Agatha looked down at her hands.
Norman watched them all with wary eyes, his pencil poised above unfinished sums. Hector laid a steadying hand on his shoulder, but said nothing, his face taut as he exchanged a troubled glance with Helen.
Alex bore all this as though he were alone in the room. He smiled easily. “We should expect our first students by morning. Honestly, I can’t wait to receive them. Hector, is the classroom ready?”
“It’s ready.” Hector’s brow was so low it almost concealed his eyes from view. His hand had tightened on Norman’s shoulder enough to make the boy wince.
Hector had taken up the role as general caretaker around camp, carefully maintaining the large building they had built specifically for learning—a wide open, high-roofed concrete shell crammed with the wealth of the Old World they had salvaged. They called it the Temple. Alex had mentored James under that roof for many years.
Hector had been trying to get Alex to do the same for Norman for almost a long. His efforts had been in vain.
Instead, Norman had been consigned to learning through the others in an opportunistic fashion, poaching titbits from each of them as they went about their daily lives. He enjoyed reading, but James had taken the liberty of perusing his reading list from time to time, and could only feel sorry for the boy; he made admirable efforts to read widely, but there was no coordination, no direction. The boy was a blind man feeling his way through an endless ocean of words and scripture, with nobody from the Old World to guide him.
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