'Ah, yeah, good old Buckland. The King of Central Birmingham,' Thackeray said sarcastically to Caitlin. 'He came up fast after the Fall, some local crook with plenty of thugs on tap to enforce his ways. There was too much chaos to get any opposition going, and once he was established, that was it.'
'That's not just it,' Harvey interjected. 'It's the thing he picked up at the Fall ... the devil...'
'Superstition,' Thackeray sneered. 'You'd believe any old bollocks, you would. That's the kind of stupid stuff they put out to keep people like you in line.'
'It's true! Smacker saw it.'
'He did, did he?'
'Well, not exactly
'Buckland's just a hard man who'll go that extra mile to stay in power. And none of us are inhumane enough to match him. So we just hide out, and live a life in the shadows.' His voice was filled with self-loathing, but he turned to Caitlin and forced a smile. 'You know what they say, you're either part of the cure or you're part of the disease. So that's us done for.'
'I wish we could get out of here,' Harvey said wistfully. 'Maybe go down to Worcester. I had some good times there, in the Lamb and Flag. They're mellow down there.'
'Forget it. We're never getting out,' Thackeray said. 'Look at it - they've got it bolted down tight with their little principalities and banana republics, living off the leftovers of society and doing over everyone else who comes into view.' He scanned the skyline thoughtfully, then added sourly, 'This city is a metaphor. Everybody has their own Birmingham - it's a state of mind. You never get away from it.'
'Bloody ex-student,' Harvey muttered.
Mary erupted into a twilight sky high over Wilmington, filled with an overwhelming sense of failure, but not really knowing why. Below her, on Windover Hill, the god was slowly closing the door with a fizz of blue fire.
Her confusion and dismay were quickly supplanted by a burst of unfocused anxiety. She trusted her instinct in the spirit-form, where every thought and sensation was heightened, and quickly looked around for the source. What she saw made all the ecstasy of her current state quickly drain away. Her body was not where she had left it. It had been dragged twenty feet across Dragon Hill. The culprit stood nearby: the twisted dead man she was sure had died in the fire, looking completely untouched by the conflagration that had engulfed him.
It was being tormented by the Elysium, but in their spectral state they clearly had no true ability to physically stop him. They swooped and soared around him, their faces transformed by howls of pain. For a moment, Mary was locked in panic. How could she have been so stupid as to leave her body in such an exposed position? She knew the risks: if her body died while she was in spirit-form, she would drift like a ghost before she finally broke up and blew away.
The Jigsaw Man lashed out at the Elysium, somehow clearly able to see them. Sharish broke off from the battle and rushed up to Mary like a beam of light reflected off glass.
'You must come quickly,' he said. 'We cannot hold him off much longer.'
But Mary was already moving before the final word had been uttered. She re-entered her body with force, desperate not to accept the usual period of lazy readjustment, tinged with sadness, her limbs feeling as heavy as lead, her head stuffed with cotton wool. She attempted to get to her feet, but her legs buckled beneath her. It felt as if a rock pressed on her shoulders.
The Jigsaw Man noticed her sudden movement and instantly ignored the Elysium. Its gait was as fast as it had been in the abandoned house, slow for a split second, then speeded-up and jerky. Dead hands clasped around Mary's throat before she had barely registered that the Jigsaw Man had moved.
'You must fight him!' Sharish said. 'We can do nothing.'
The fingers clamped tighter and tighter. Mary couldn't breathe; the pressure in her head grew intense.
'Use the Blue Fire!' Sharish pressed. 'Your kind have always been able to manipulate it.'
As the oxygen disappeared, a strange clarity came over Mary and she knew exactly what Sharish was telling her. She recalled the lines of earth energy rushing from Dragon Hill to the Long Man, and with one grasping hand reached down to the scrubby grass. Her fingers clutched at the air, missed, clutched again, and somehow she was able to extend herself enough to scrape the ground.
The Jigsaw Man helped by pressing her down towards it, but her life was fading fast under his rigid grip. The back of its head faced her her, but she could just glimpse the eyes, turned away, rolling wildly.
In her mind, she formed the image, but she had no idea how to activate it. And then Sharish was beside her, whispering a word in her ear that she had never heard before and which made her slightly queasy. Without thinking, she repeated it.
All she saw was blue, across her field of vision, deep in her head. Sapphire flames ran from her fingertips through her body and into the Jigsaw Man, exploding in a cascade of sparks twenty feet above her head.
When her vision cleared, her attacker spasmed on the ground several yards away, smoke rising from his joints.
'You must hurry,' Sharish said. 'The thing will not stay down long.'
'Goddess, what is it?' Mary gasped, rubbing at her sore throat as she scrambled for her clothes.
'Its power comes from you.' Sharish floated at her side while she bundled up her possessions and hurried down the hillside, Arthur Lee bounding at her heels from wherever he had been hiding. 'Despair. Self-hatred. Failure. It will not stop attempting to destroy you until all those things are gone from within you.'
'Then it'll never stop,' Mary said bitterly. 'Never.'
By the time she reached the foot of the hill her head had cleared. The blue fire rushing through her had a strange effect on her system: she felt positive for the first time in years. 'There must be something I can do to put things right,' she said to herself. She turned to Sharish. 'OK, if I failed with the god, then I want to find the Goddess.'
He shook his head slowly. 'It—'
'Don't tell me how dangerous it is. Don't tell me how I'm going to fail. Just tell me where I can find her. I've got to do one good deed before I die ... before that thing gets me.'
He stared into her face. 'You are stronger than you think.'
'Don't give me flannel. I just want to help Caitlin. I've messed up again, as usual, but I can't give up now - she's depending on me.'
'Then you must be prepared for a long journey,' he said. 'And a terrible trial. You may not survive.'
Time passed for Caitlin in a haze of food and rest and as much comfort as could be conjured from the makeshift premises. She was not aware of anything, least of all herself, but a part of her knew that she was cared for, and beneath the dull, flat line of her existence, that felt good. In her head, she still wandered the bleak, frozen plains of the Ice-Field, but it had become more of a Zen meditation than a desperate search for a way out. In time, perhaps she could even accept it.
Thackeray never left her alone for fear she might accidentally harm herself. When they crept through the darkened streets in search of premises to ransack, he held her hand, guiding her carefully past dangers, always watching out for her. Occasionally he would take her off with Harvey for what he laughingly called a 'road trip', sitting by the canals throwing stones while Harvey attempted to fish, or breaking into the council chamber to lie on the floor and examine the majestic architecture of the sweeping ceiling.
'Even in the middle of all this you've got to seek out anything that might give you a laugh, make you feel as if you're alive,' he said one warm day on the edge of summer. 'Otherwise, what's the point?'
That night, Thackeray laid out a dinner for the three of them with a white cotton tablecloth on the floor, silver cutlery and crystal glasses for one of their very rare bottles of wine. As they sat around, with the candlelight flickering, he thought Caitlin looked more beautiful than ever and told Harvey so.
'You know, matey, I have to say this, but all this is a bit, you know ... sick,' Harvey replied uneasily 'She's, like, disabled or something. Or, you know...' He ta
pped his temple.
'I'm not going to take advantage of her,' Thackeray replied. 'But I can still see the person she was, or is - maybe will be again. It's there in her face, just beneath the surface. A good person ...'
'You think she's going to get better?'
Thackeray shrugged. 'I can't help myself.'
'I think you should get over her, mate, for your own good.'
Thackeray raised his glass to both of them and took a sip of the Zinfandel. 'Let me tell you something, Harvey. You're going to say I'm a complete wanker, but like I care what you think, right? Loving, and having someone who loves you, is addictive. Your whole being comes alive and suddenly it feels as if the life you had before was just floating in treacle. And the cliches, they're all true, like you're living some Woman's Weekly life. You can't eat, you can't sleep, you can't get her face out of your head, or the moments you spent together, and the things you did, and the words you said, and some stupid song that fixes it in melody and moment, constantly replaying, turning over, as if you were hoping you'd be able to step back into them and live them all again, just like the first time.'
Harvey smiled, but in a nice way, sipping his own wine with one self-mocking little finger extended.
'And all these other clichés,' Thackeray continued. 'Connections ... gut instincts that transcend rational thought. Love at first sight, if you will. How stupid is that? You think to yourself, stay away from this person, they're bad for me, I'm settled, survival routines in place, my life would be a real mess if I threw in with them, and your subconscious, or your heart, says do it, this is right. The person in the back of your head just knows. And you can't help yourself. You're lost to it. That person - the real you in your deep, deep subconscious - he always knows what's right for you, at that particular time, what you need. And he or she recognises links that transcend physical space. You see a face, he sees a soul mate, something so deep it's rooted in both your genes. And when that connection happens, you know it's going to be high passion, that you're going to blaze like a star, and that you'll probably crash and burn soon after. And you don't care, you don't care.' He stared into the deep red depths of his wine with a faint, troubled smile.
'It's going to end in tears, Thackeray,' Harvey said softly.
'Yeah. 'Course it is.'
They ate a long, varied meal, determined to enjoy themselves in spite of everything. Thackeray fed Caitlin the first mouthful of every dish so she could acquire the taste before continuing herself. After they had finished, Harvey strummed them romantic songs on his acoustic guitar, tongue in cheek at first, but by the end they were all lost in a haze of plangent emotions.
Finally they sat in silence, thoughtful, enjoying a faint alcohol mood. And that was when they heard a tremendous crash.
Thackeray and Harvey instantly scrambled to the front of the shop to peer out into the concourse. The strengthened-glass security doors had been smashed off their hinges by a flat-bed truck that had reversed into them at speed. There was movement all over the shadowy first floor of the mall. Eventually torches burst into light and the burly leather-clad forms of the plague wardens fell into relief.
Thackeray glanced at Harvey, who was shaking and looked as if he were going to be sick. 'We can't pull down the security shutters - it'll make too much noise,' Thackeray hissed. 'We'll have to hide in the back and hope it's just coincidence they're here and that they're not looking for us.'
Harvey was rigid and fixated on the swarming figures until Thackeray gave his shoulder a squeeze. Then they both slipped back to the living area.
'Oh, God, they know we're here!' Harvey whined, scrubbing a hand through his greasy hair. 'Someone must have seen us on the roof. I knew it was a mistake to go near the edge!'
'No point moaning about it now - it's done.' Thackeray took Caitlin's hand and pulled her to her feet.
'Aren't you scared?' Harvey asked.
'Yes,' Thackeray replied tersely.
'You know what Buckland will do to us if he gets us.'
'Maybe he'll just be happy with our supplies to add to his vast warehouse of looted consumer goods.'
'Right. After he's hung us out to dry.' Harvey hugged his arms around himself; tears of fear sprang to the corners of his eyes.
Thackeray gave him a rough shove and followed it up with a smile. 'Come on - into the hiding places. And good luck.'
Harvey forced a smile. 'You're a bastard, Thackeray, but we've had some good times.'
He made to go towards a packing crate, but Thackeray caught his arm and said, 'No, the good one. And take her with you.'
Harvey searched his friend's face for a moment and could see no point in arguing. Reluctantly, he went to a wall panel like any other and slipped a penknife into the join to prise it open. Behind was a dusty, claustrophobic space in the dry wall. Briefly, Thackeray hugged Caitlin to him, smelling her hair, wishing things were different. Then he hurriedly pressed her into the hidey-hole first, motioned her to remain silent with a finger to his lips, then let Harvey slip in after her before replacing the wall panel.
The sound of the plague wardens violently searching the concourse drew rapidly closer. Thackeray threw himself behind a packing crate and burrowed under a pile of filthy, mildewed rags. They fell in just such a way that he had a very limited view into the room.
The plague wardens entered seconds later, whooping the minute they saw the remnants of the meal. 'Here it is! Bastards have been having a party!' someone exclaimed.
'Search the place - they're here somewhere,' a gruff, authoritative voice ordered.
Thackeray remained tense, his breath a lead weight in his throat. He watched as the tablecloth was ripped up, the crystal smashed, the sleeping quarters torn and stamped. He knew they'd get him sooner or later; Harvey had known it, too, but one being caught might allow the other to escape, and they both accepted Thackeray was the least likely to fold under pressure. At least until the torture started.
Seconds later they approached the crate. Thackeray steeled himself. The rags were torn off and the room filled with jeers and abuse. Threatening hands yanked him to his feet before a fist smashed forcefully into his face. Blood splattered from a burst lip and he saw stars for a second.
'Where are the others?' The authoritative voice came from the plague warden who had shot the woman in the face on the night he had met Caitlin.
'Fuck off.'
Someone hit him again and this time he did black out for a while. When he came to, he was supported between two thugs and the leader hovered inches from his face. 'I'll ask you again,' the leader said. 'And this time we'll cut off your ear if you get smart.'
'All right,' Thackeray said with mock-weakness. 'They got out... across the roof and down the back. We had an escape route planned. I was supposed to lock up the base, but there wasn't time ...'
He let his head droop. The leader grabbed him by the hair and yanked it back up. 'How many?'
'Two others.' The leader nodded, satisfied. Thackeray knew he would have seen the places set on the tablecloth.
'So, you thought you'd disobey all Mr Buckland's rules, hoarding your own stuff while the community starves. You selfish bastard.'
Thackeray wanted to laugh at the idea of Buckland being a provider for the poor and oppressed, but he managed to control himself by feigning almost losing consciousness again.
The leader backed off and waved his hand in a circle in the air. 'Clean this place out. Make sure you get all their stores. The bulk's probably in some other place. And get this bastard out of here.'
Thackeray knew his fate, but he was surprised that his first thought was not regret or fear, but of a woman he hadn't even heard speak, who had given him no sign of who she was.
Harvey and Caitlin emerged from their hiding place into darkness an hour later when it was clear that the plague wardens had definitely gone, and all the supplies had been removed. Harvey was sobbing silently, smearing his tears across his blotchy face.
'Sorry,' he said to her w
ithout really talking to her. 'I'm pathetic.' With an effort, he composed himself. 'Look, they're not going to be back here, so you wait... I need to find another place for us to hide out. Somewhere safe.' He chewed a knuckle, looked queasy, then gave her as much of a reassuring smile as he could muster before pressing her down to sit next to the wall. He lit a candle. 'Don't be frightened,' he whispered. 'I'll be back for you.'
And then he was out of the door and running, his footsteps echoing like gunshots in the dark vault of the concourse.
Caitlin sat and watched the shadows flicker on the far wall. Deep in the bleak chambers of her head, something stirred.
'Where am I?' Her voice shrieked above the howling wind, her throat raw from her anguished screams. The fierce gale buffeted her back and forth, whipping snow into her face like hot pins so she couldn't see where she'd been or where she was going. Even wrapping her arms tightly around her couldn't stop the terrible cold from penetrating deep into the core of her being.
There was only the whiteness of frozen nothing all around as she staggered across the Ice-Field. No warmth, no hope. It would be better if she simply lay down to die, let the snow cover her over, let the permafrost build up,
crush her down, make her a part of the ice itself.
*
Electricity crackled around the room, sending incandescent sparks fizzing from the metal fittings. Thunder boomed off the walls and there was ozone in the air. In one corner stood the black knight in the boar mask, his hands on the broadsword balanced on its tip between his astride legs.
'Caitlin Shepherd!' His voice sounded like bees swarming from a hive.
Caitlin stirred; light flickered in the lanterns of her eyes. In the Ice-Field, the snowstorm shifted briefly, and the hard rocks of the shelter emerged in grey from the white.
'Caitlin Shepherd!' the knight said again, in his detached, alien voice.
Caitlin blinked; the white gave way to the shifting shadows of the room. More electricity flashed around her so that it felt as if they were in some glass jar cut off from the real world.
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