Michael didn’t return until the Saturday. Annie felt a strangeness on seeing him, knowing the truth, finding herself unable to tell him. How could she say that there was a creature walking around in the form of his wife – a creature with whom he had perhaps shared board and bed – who was really a thing of magic and menace, spun from river water, perhaps altogether evil? She couldn’t say it. He would think her mad or deluded, and when he saw Rianna next might mention the matter, and then who knew what she would do. Ignorance kept him safe. Yet he was already troubled – she saw the uncertainty in his face, and knew an impulse to smooth the worry from his forehead, and kiss the smile back onto his mouth, an impulse she had not known before anxiety touched him. She told herself it was just instinct, a natural urge to offer comfort, and pushed it sternly away.
‘I meant to see you yesterday,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I stayed the night in London. I wanted to find a way to reach Rianna. Her agent definitely believes she’s in Georgia, but he has no means of contacting her or anyone in the company. They seem to have gone beyond the ken of mobile phones. A primitive place, Georgia. I got hold of the mother of one of the other actors, and the boyfriend of another, but they’re in the same boat as me: they just wait for occasional calls. I’m sure you’re wrong about seeing her. I really can’t imagine why she should lie.’
‘But you’re worried,’ Annie said. Had he seen Rianna’s top in the linen basket? Of course not – or if he had, it would mean nothing to him. Men didn’t notice anything to do with clothes.
‘No – no I’m not. Well, not much. Just confused. Any danger of coffee?’
She made it, while Michael seemed to be hesitating, teetering on the verge of some perilous plunge. ‘Where’s the man of the house?’ he asked, evidently playing for time. ‘Shouldn’t he be around this morning?’
‘Nathan’s out with his friends,’ Annie said. Actually, she knew, Nathan was out with a stranger, the unknown asylum-seeker, but she didn’t feel ready to discuss all that now. Besides, no doubt his friends came into it somewhere.
‘I was wondering,’ Michael said, plunging, ‘about his father … You said something, before I left. You said he wasn’t the man in your life …?’
‘No,’ Annie said. ‘Daniel died. Nathan was the result of a – I suppose you could call it a one-night stand, just after. I didn’t even know the man.’ She lifted her chin, looking out of the kitchen window. In some obscure way she felt this was part of her penance, for the crime she hadn’t committed, for surrendering, for letting it happen. ‘Are you shocked?’
‘Of course not.’ He moved closer – she felt it – and laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. ‘We all do things – when we’re upset, when we’re hurt, when we’re grieving – which are out of character. You’d lost the man you loved. You needed … consolation. Was that how it was?’
‘In a way,’ Annie said.
The kettle boiled, and she made the coffee. Michael didn’t try to touch her again. ‘Human lives are a mess,’ she said, ‘aren’t they?’ And inhuman lives.
‘Tell me about it,’ said Michael.
‘Incidentally,’ she struggled to resume casual conversation, ‘I’ve been checking some old stock lately, and I’ve come across a couple of books which might interest you. I’m always unearthing stuff in this place – stuff I hadn’t catalogued, some that’s been here since before I came. It’s a bottomless pit of bookdom.’
‘All right,’ he conceded, ‘let’s talk about books.’
Nathan was waiting at the bus stop on the edge of the village. He had had an uncomfortable scene with Hazel, not quite a quarrel, because she wanted to come with him, and he felt he had to see the man on his own, at Least for the first time. ‘Two of us might alarm him,’ he suggested.
‘He’s a grown-up,’ Hazel said shortly. ‘He’s not going to be frightened by two kids.’
‘Not frightened, but … put off. Anyway, you have to divert George. We can’t tell him all this, not yet, anyway. Please, Hazel.’
‘I don’t want to hang out with George. He’s geeky.’
‘That’s unkind, and untrue. Hazel …’
In the end, she agreed, but reluctantly. And now Nathan was waiting for the bus from Crowford, knowing it wouldn’t be on time, because buses never were, and shaking inwardly as the wait stretched out and the morning grew longer and longer. When the bus finally appeared, he thought the tension was almost unbearable. This was where dream became reality, where the other world came home. A woman got off with a shopping basket, someone he vaguely knew, so he forced himself to smile and say hello, then a young mother with toddler and pushchair. Will I recognize him? Nathan wondered. I’ve never seen his face. How will I know …? A man was approaching the exit with a stumbling stride, a very tall man. ‘This Eade?’ he asked the driver.
‘That’s right.’
And there he was. The man on the beach. The immigrant from another universe. Nathan’s first thought was that he was a very tall man. He had realized in his dreams that the inhabitants of that alternative cosmos were taller than average, but seeing one of them in the flesh brought it home to him. The exile must have been seven feet high, broad-shouldered but very lean, dressed in garments no doubt assembled from a charity shop: a flapping raincoat, trousers that didn’t quite cover his ankles, a rugby shirt striped in blue and maroon. The clothes seemed only to accentuate his differentness; Nathan was reminded of Dr Who in some old episodes which George’s brother had on video. His skin was sallow and dark, ochre not brown, and his face showed similar proportions to that of the woman Halmé, though it was striking rather than beautiful. His jaw curved down from high cheekbones to the narrow jut of the chin; his hair was long and black and wild; his eyes glinted in cadaverous sockets, the irises deeply purple and bright as if lit from within. You could see he was special, Nathan thought; everyone must see that. It explained the attitude of Jillian Squires: she too had seen and respected his uniqueness. As the bright eyes sought him out he extended his hand. ‘I’m Nathan Ward.’
The exile didn’t take Nathan’s hand; perhaps he was not yet familiar with the gesture. ‘I remember you,’ he said.
‘Will you tell me your name?’ Nathan asked.
‘I am Errek Moy Rhindon. Here they call me Eric. Eric Rhindon.’
Man and boy studied each other, curiosity matched with curiosity. Nathan hoped he wasn’t being impolite. It is difficult to subscribe to the manners of another world when you don’t know what they are. ‘Thank you very much for coming.’
Eric nodded, accepting the courtesy as his due. ‘Maybe I must thank you for saving me,’ he said. ‘But this world strange to me. Is hard to adapt. Your society have decline from noble past, I think.’
‘You mean, ancient Greece?’ Nathan hazarded. ‘Or Egypt?’ They had begun to walk along as they talked. Nathan was heading for a café where there were several quiet corners suitable for private conversation.
‘Egypt? Greece?’ Eric shrugged. ‘They are other planets?’
‘Countries. On this planet. Part of our – noble past.’
‘No! I mean, great civilization in space. Advanced technology.’ He pronounced the word with care. Evidently it was a recent acquisition. ‘Also much force. Like in my world. Force very strong there. Not strong here now. All used up.’
‘What kind of force?’ Nathan was baffled.
‘Energy. Special energy. Like electrics, but special. Controlled by mind, hand, words. May the force be with you.’
Nathan laughed. ‘You mean magic,’ he said. ‘We don’t have any magic here. Just in stories.’
‘Stories must be true. I have seen films, this week, at Mrs Squires’ house, about the noble past. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away … This cannot be a lie. To lie is a crime.’ He stopped abruptly, and stared at Nathan. ‘Do they lie in your world?’
‘Not lies,’ Nathan said, fumbling for the right words. ‘Stories. Made-up stories, for fun. Are there no stories in your world?’
Eric was scowling with a mixture of concentration and bewilderment. ‘Stories must be true. To make up, is wrong. Evil. Lies corrupt.’
‘In our world,’ Nathan said, ‘we differentiate between lies and stories. If we know a story is made up, then it doesn’t matter. It’s good. We learn from stories. Don’t you do that in your world?’
‘No,’ Eric said curtly.
They walked on. ‘You watched Star Wars?’ Nathan inquired cautiously.
‘History,’ Eric said. ‘I thought – is history. I thought I learn about this world. I understand the force.’
‘Me too,’ Nathan said. ‘Without made-up stories, I wouldn’t understand. There’s magic in your world – I saw that, I understood, because of made-up stories about magic, in this world. Do you see?’
Eric thought about it for a while. Then he nodded.
‘You’re very clever,’ Nathan said diffidently. ‘You understand things very quickly. And you’ve learnt our language in no time at all. You must have been very important in your world. A scientist or something?’
Eric smiled, and shrugged. ‘I was not important,’ he said. ‘I was not … scientist.’ He obviously didn’t know the word. ‘Once, I was fisherman. But fish died as air grew thin. Special layer of air, protecting from sun. We destroyed it, let in sundeath. Force poisoned. Sea poisoned. Not many fish now. Only monsters. I work in factory, make food to taste of fish, but not real.’
‘So you do have made-up things,’ Nathan said. ‘You have made-up food. Your food is a lie.’
‘You are wise,’ Eric declared. ‘Made-up food bad.’
‘You said, the force was poisoned. Is that what they meant when they talked of the contamination?’ Eric looked uncomprehending, and Nathan strove to recollect his dreams, and the sound of the language. ‘Unvarhu-sag?’
‘Yes! Unvarhu-sag. Force poisoned. What word you say? Contamination. I will remember.’
They had reached the café, which did vegetarian lunches. It was early for lunch, but Nathan decided that didn’t matter. ‘Come and have some real food,’ he said, glad he hadn’t chosen anything like a McDonald’s – not that there was one in Eade. They sat down at a corner table and Nathan ordered baked potatoes with cheese and a salad. He hoped that would be real enough.
‘What exactly is the contamination?’ he asked Eric. ‘What were they doing when they closed off Maali?’
‘Unvarhu-sag is … poisoning. People sick, animals, birds – few left after air grow thin, but contamination take them. In time trees, plants die too. All die. It begin long ago –’ he gave a wry smile ‘– in galaxy far, far away. Powerful men use force to destroy, in war. Create bad force, evil, poison. Like dark side, but … illness. Illness of everything. Galaxy cut off with good force, but all force same power, same energy. In the end, bad corrupt good. Where is force, is contamination. It spread through universe. First, we poison with technology, make air thin, water unclean, but that is slow, slow, many thousand years to destroy one planet. Contamination quicker. Maali cut off, maybe gone in two, three seasons. Nothing can do. All die. All die …’
‘You had family,’ Nathan said, realizing. ‘A wife, children …’
‘No children. In my world, we use force to live long. Force inside us, make us strong, not much sick, never old. Only contamination kill. But long life mean, no children. Force change you.’
‘The force – magic – makes you sterile?’
‘Sterile.’ Once again, Nathan saw him committing a word to memory. ‘Yes. No children now for many hundred years.’
‘None?’
‘None.’ Suddenly, Eric’s face lightened. ‘Many children here. Is good to see children. Your world younger, cleaner. You save me – a child save me. In old legend, angels are children. Legends made up – is crime to make up story now, against law, but legend very old, before crime, before law. I think – you are right. We learn from made-up story, perhaps more than from history.’ He repeated, emphatically: ‘You are wise.’
Nathan didn’t feel at all wise, but he pushed away his embarrassment. When you were talking to someone from another universe, there were bound to be misunderstandings. Their baked potatoes arrived; Eric sniffed enthusiastically. ‘I have this before,’ he explained. ‘In hostel.’ He forked up a lavish mouthful. ‘Taste better here.’
‘This is a good place,’ Nathan said, meaning the café. ‘Do you live in the hostel?’
‘No. I go for meals, sometimes. Also to Mrs Squires and her friends, kind people. But I like to sleep under sky, to be free. In my world, dangerous to stay outside too long, even at night. Moons reflect sunrays.’ There was a pause while he concentrated on eating. ‘They say, I am asylum-seeker. Must apply to government to stay, or go back. But I think, they cannot send me back.’ He grinned wolfishly through the baked potato. ‘But you say, no force here except in made-up story. This not true. You bring me here. The force is strong in you. There is force in every world. Like electrics, like gravity. Is part of life.’
‘Not here,’ Nathan said positively. ‘I don’t know how I brought you here. I dream about your world, but I can’t control what happens in my dream, or what I do.’ He thought about the last dream, when they could see him, or almost see him, and shivered. ‘It frightens me.’
Eric nodded sagely. ‘To have power is fearful,’ he said. ‘Is good you know that. You learn control, in time.’
‘There’s no one to teach me,’ Nathan said. ‘Not in this world.’ He continued, awkwardly: ‘Are you angry about being here? On the telephone, you said you found our society backward. I know it must seem sort of primitive to you; I’ve seen enough of your world to realize that. Would you like – if I could do it – would you want to go home?’
‘Of course not. I go home, I die. Many good things here. I like to sleep under sky, to see children. My world very far away now, like long ago. Memory old, not sharp, not bad pain. Much to learn here, to fill my mind. I grow accustomed very soon.’ He added, after an intermission with salad and more potato: ‘Food good. No real food in my world now. I like real food.’
‘I think,’ Nathan said, ‘my mother suggested – I should take you to see Uncle Barty. He’s the wisest person I know. We should tell him the truth about you.’ Nobody meeting Eric, he thought, could possibly doubt him. He wondered what Jillian Squires had really made of the exile. ‘Besides, he’s the best cook in the whole world.’
‘I always tell truth,’ Eric said. ‘But people believe I come from another country, not another world. There is place called Maali here?’
‘In Africa,’ Nathan affirmed. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Mali. It’s nearly the same name. Like Errek and Eric. I suppose … names could be similar in all worlds.’ He found himself inventing addresses like Paris, Narnia and Timbuktu, Tattooine. That sounded reasonable, but what if you tried it with Manchester, or Worthing? Worthing, Naboo, for instance?
‘This Uncle Barty, he is good friend?’
‘He’s not really my uncle,’ Nathan said. Perhaps Eric didn’t know what uncle meant, but he didn’t feel up to explaining it now, particularly since it wasn’t relevant. ‘But he is a great friend, and a truly wonderful cook. He’ll give you more real food than you can eat.’
They finished their meal, and Nathan paid from the allowance he now received in honour of being thirteen. ‘Children have pocket money,’ Annie had said. ‘Teenagers have an allowance.’ He left the café with Eric and headed out of the village to Thornyhill. People stared to see them together: the dark, serious boy and the man with his height and his wild hair and his purple eyes. Many who had commented occasionally on Nathan’s strangeness – ‘Too polite – too quiet – never teases smaller children – never yells at adults’ – saw further evidence of it in his eccentric companion. Jason Wicks, slouching round a corner with a friend (Jason had practised slouching so much he was getting very good at it) shouted an insult which its target didn’t even hear, and relapsed into a savage mutter.
‘You don’t like that kid, do you?’ said the friend, astutely. ‘We ought to deal with him.’
‘I will.’
‘Who’s the weirdo?’
‘Nathan’s the weirdo.’ He embellished the phrase with ugly adjectives. ‘The other bloke’s just some tramp.’ He continued, with rare perception: ‘Probably one of those illegal immigrants. dad says they sneak over here, sponge off the state, take our jobs …’
‘Your dad’s been on the dole for years.’
‘Goes to show then, dunnit?’
Beyond the village, Nathan was trying to clear his backlog of questions, but there were too many for one day, one talk, and he didn’t want Eric to feel under pressure, and he didn’t know where to begin, or when to stop. He returned over and over to the subject of the contamination. ‘You mean, it’s poisoned your entire galaxy?’
‘Many galaxies. Too many to count. I tell you, whole universe poisoned.’ Eric’s eyes seemed to darken at the thought. ‘My planet in last galaxy. Maybe a few other planets survive, but not right for life. No air. My planet – Eos – good place, then air grow thin, sundeath come. Now, contamination. Last people run to Eos, nowhere else left to go. Government set up in Ynd.’
‘Ynd? Is that the city?’
‘Continent. City is called Arkatron. Grandir live there.’
‘Please tell me about the Grandir,’ Nathan said.
‘Emperor. President. No word here. Like prime minister, but more important. Ruler of whole world.’ Eric was evidently thinking hard, trying to clarify his meaning, but his stride didn’t slacken. ‘Once, Grandir rule galaxies – thousand thousand galaxies.’ He didn’t know the terms for the higher numbers, Nathan guessed. ‘Now, just one planet, maybe just one continent.’
‘Is the Grandir a title, like emperor, or a name?’ Nathan wanted to know.
‘Title. Like prime minister, like – queen. Name not used. Perhaps by family; no one else.’
‘How long has this Grandir ruled?’
Eric shrugged. ‘Before contamination. Much before. Five thousand years, ten … Force is strong with him. Power give long life. Is good for ruler – he learn much wisdom, many things. They say, he has plan to save us, ancient plan from long ago, but not ready yet. Hope plan ready soon, or nobody left to save.’
‘I wish I could help,’ Nathan said, ‘but I don’t think I could dream everyone here.’
‘Would be wrong,’ Eric said thoughtfully. ‘Too many of us for small planet. Backward here. My people take over. Not good for you.’
‘Are all the people in your world as clever as you?’ Nathan asked. ‘It’s amazing how fast you’ve learnt our language.’
‘No. I am stupid. I learn slow, slow, and speak very bad. English easy, not too many words. My language more difficult.’
‘In the dreams,’ Nathan remarked, ‘I understand it. Would you say something, to see if I understand now?’
Eric obliged, glancing round at the woods they were entering as he spoke. Nathan found he could follow his speech, though it was far harder than in dreams, as though the atmosphere of this world fogged his thinking, and when he tried to answer his tongue stumbled over the simplest phrases.
‘You have accent of Ynd,’ Eric said, ‘accent of the city. I think you dream much there.’
‘Yes.’
The woods were deepening on either side as they made their way towards Thornyhill. It was a sunlit afternoon with a few skimming clouds, their shadows flying swiftly over the ground. As always there was movement everywhere: the dancing of light and shade, leaf and wind. Nathan looked for Woody, feeling he was there, but could not see him. And suddenly there seemed to be too much movement – a shimmer over the road, a twisting of the path that wound away beneath the trees, a shifting of the leaf-mould where no feet were seen to tread. Eric stiffened and stared, his eyes widening until white showed all round the purple iris. Nathan took his arm and felt the tensing of muscles beneath his clothes, a rigidity which he realized was that of fear.
‘We go back,’ Eric said. ‘Now. Now.’
It’s like at the site of the lost house, Nathan thought. A wind coming after us, just above ground – a wind with footsteps in it …
‘What is it?’ he demanded, though there was no reason Eric should know.
‘Gnomon,’ the exile said. He had swung round and they were walking quickly back towards the village, looking behind every few seconds, along the empty road. The grasses on the verge trembled and bent; seeds scattered from a dandelion-head.
‘Shouldn’t we run?’ Nathan whispered.
‘No. They run faster. We walk, they walk. I hope.’ Eric’s dark-ochre complexion had faded to sallow.
‘What’s a gnomon? Is it from your world?’
‘They. Always many. Have shape sometimes, but not solid. No flesh. Move between worlds. Also called Ozmosees: in old legend they are servants of Oz, king of underworld. Story untrue, illegal, but maybe some truth, very small truth. Someone control them, send them here. Send them for me.’
‘How would anyone know you’re here?’
They were walking quicker now, and still quicker. The ripple of movement kept pace with them.
‘Maybe riders see I not drown. See you. Tell Grandir. Tell someone.’
‘But … I’ve seen them before,’ Nathan said. ‘Before you came.’
A car whizzed past; on the verges, the grasses froze; Eric stopped abruptly. ‘Then maybe,’ he said, ‘they come for you.’ He seized Nathan’s hand and began to walk much faster, so the boy had to run to keep up.
‘What happens – if they catch us?’ Nathan panted, but Eric didn’t answer. And then they were out of the woods, and into broad fields, and wide spaces of sunlight, and only a natural breeze ruffled the grass behind them.
Eric released Nathan’s hand with an air of bewilderment. ‘I fear for you,’ he said. ‘Adult must protect child, yes? I not remember, but I do it. Imris. Older than memory.’
‘Instinct,’ Nathan supplied, finding he knew the word.
‘Much here I not understand. Chance you save me, but your power not chance. Is like Ozmosees, to dream into other world – but you sometime solid there, real; gnomon never solid. And gnomons from my world, but follow you …’ He thought for a minute. His thought had a visible intensity; his brow contracted, his eye-colour fluctuated; Nathan could almost see the flickering of circuits inside his head. ‘I stay,’ he announced at last. ‘You save me; I save you. Is balance. I watch and learn. In my world, special herb keep off gnomons. Sylpherim. Smell very strong, very bad. Gnomons not solid, all senses: smell, hearing, sight. Made of senses. Not endure too strong smell, very high noise, bright bright light. Maybe I find same herb here. I search.’
‘What happens,’ Nathan reiterated, ‘if the gnomons catch someone?’
‘Go inside him, eat his mind, bring madness …’ He laid his big hand on Nathan’s forehead. ‘Not you,’ he said. ‘I help.’ Then he turned, and strode off at great speed into the fields.
Nathan didn’t try to follow. He walked slowly back to the village, trying to digest everything Eric had told him, struggling to resist the creeping onset of fear. The gnomons aren’t after me, he told himself, wherever they come from. Their whispers had accompanied his vision of the Grail; they haunted Thornyhill woods and the lost home of the Thorns; the woodwose had seen them there too, without him. Something drew them to this place, something to do with traditions and stories which the Thorns themselves didn’t fully understand. The answer is in the stories, Nathan decided with a flash of illumination – but the tales were garbled, forgotten with the passage of centuries, only fragments written down. And what could the Grimthorn Grail have to do with the ruler of a dying world, hemmed in on the last surviving planet, brooding on some secret plan that might never come to fruition?
He needed to talk to Hazel. If he talked things through, maybe they would be clearer.
Maybe not.
Annie and Michael were looking at books. ‘I think this box comes from Thornyhill,’ she said. ‘There are so many books there: Barty started this business by clearing some out. I found this the other day, in one of the cupboards. It’s probably been there since before I came. I must have put some stuff on top of it and forgotten about it. It’s very easy to overlook things here. Too many books, too many cupboards, too many nooks and crannies where all sorts of objects can go and hide.’
‘And yet it’s a small house,’ Michael remarked.
‘Larger inside,’ Annie said darkly.
‘I suppose Bartlemy’s a collector himself?’
‘I don’t know. He doesn’t spend all his time going to sales or auctions, like Rowena Thorn. I get special books for him sometimes, if he asks me, or if I hear of one I think will interest him. I suppose … he’s an incidental collector. He just goes through life picking up bits and pieces on the way.’
‘Like the rest of us in fact,’ Michael grinned. ‘He seems to have picked up quite a lot. How old is he?’
Annie smiled to herself. ‘I’ve always been too polite to ask.’
They found a social history of the Georgian era which Michael said he wanted and a couple of novels by Mrs Henry Wood which he said he couldn’t resist. He insisted on paying her over the odds – none of the books were valuable – and went away with a promise that she would call him if she needed company or a confidant. And for the first time, he gave her a farewell kiss, a peck on the cheek which was somehow not quite casual, leaving her disconcerted, slightly flustered, and vaguely pleased, though she was not yet ready to tell herself why. Villagers in Eade did not kiss; and while the citified newcomers hugged, gushed and darlinged one another in the fashionable manner Annie had always drawn back from such contact, finding it faintly insincere. But Michael, though she was sure he could air-kiss and darling with the best of them, wasn’t insincere – or at least not with her. After he had gone she sat for several minutes in an agreeable haze that passed for thought, returning to reality on the reflection that if Rianna Sardou was actually the manifestation of a malevolent water-spirit, it was hardly necessary to have scruples about her. Of course, the real Rianna must be somewhere – comatose, dead, imprisoned, or in Georgia …
She tried to shake off fruitless speculation and looked down at the book in her hand, which turned out to be an early cookbook. She must restore it to Bartlemy: it would surely be one he wouldn’t wish to lose. She began to leaf through it, noting detailed recipes in printed copperplate, with references to marchpane and poupetons and Gâteau Mellifleur, and line drawings to illustrate the results. There were even a few colour plates, protected with sheets of tissue paper, showing still-life paintings of sumptuous dishes. It was as she turned the page to one of these that a piece of paper slipped out and flapped its way to the floor. Annie bent to retrieve it, assuming it was part of the book, but she saw her mistake almost immediately. It was handwritten, not printed, and had nothing to do with cookery. She stared at it for a moment then closed the book and jumped to her feet. A hasty thumb through her address book and then she was on the phone.
‘Rowena? Is that you? It’s Annie Ward. I think I’ve found your injunction.’
Rowena Thorn arrived within the hour, trailing her solicitor like a poodle on a leash. ‘This is it,’ the solicitor confirmed, studying the document. ‘It’s not the original – at a guess that disintegrated, if it was drawn up as long ago as you say – this is an update, made in the nineteenth century, but it’s perfectly valid. Now we’ve really got a chance to prove that the sale of the cup was illegal.’
‘And I found it,’ Annie said. ‘It doesn’t seem fair. The children searched so hard, and I didn’t look at all.’
‘You get the reward,’ said Rowena. ‘Five hundred pounds. Sorry it’s not more, but I intend to keep the cup, not sell it, so it isn’t going to bring in any money. I’ll do something for your boy and his friends too. Chocolates? Or maybe we could all go out for a slap-up meal.’
‘That would be terrific,’ Annie said. ‘But I don’t want the money –’
‘Nonsense! Everyone wants money, unless they’re mad or brainless, and you’re a bright girl. You take it and have done with it. You’ll spend it on your son no doubt, mothers always do, but he’s a good lad and hasn’t had much spoiling. Don’t refuse me – I owe you for this, more than money. I’m the rightful owner of the cup – knew it as soon as I saw it. I’d give my soul to get it back.’
‘You shouldn’t say such things,’ Annie said, with a sudden shiver. ‘I know you didn’t mean it seriously, but –’
‘I meant it all right,’ Rowena said.
In the evening, Nathan brought Hazel and George to supper, and they asked eagerly for the story of Annie’s find, and discussed at length what would happen next, and whether Rowena Thorn really would be able to recover the Grail. ‘It’ll be up to the courts to decide,’ George said wisely. He had recently decided he wanted to be a barrister, after watching a courtroom drama on television, and was doing his best to adopt suitable turns of phrase.
‘If the injunction says the cup mustn’t be sold, then they’ll have to give it back to Mrs Thorn, won’t they?’ Hazel said.
‘I don’t suppose it’ll be that straightforward,’ Annie responded. ‘Legal matters never are. Even if they accept that the sale was invalid, there might be the issue of proving Rowena’s own entitlement.’
‘She’s a Thorn,’ George said, forgetting his barristerly manner. ‘Everyone knows that. There aren’t any others.’
‘I don’t see that,’ Hazel objected with a sudden frown. ‘There are bound to be distant cousins and things: all families have those. I’m a Thorn, in a way. Great-grandma’s a Carlow, and they’re descended from the Thorns. There could be lots of semi-Thorns, spread all over the place.’
‘Are you going to put in a claim for the cup?’ George demanded flippantly.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Annie said to Nathan, who had taken little part in the discussion. ‘How did it go with your immigrant friend?’
Nathan, though glad about the discovery of the injunction, had had other things on his mind. ‘Eric,’ he said absently. ‘His name’s Eric.’
‘Did you take him to see Uncle Barty?’
‘No. No, not yet. I will, though. He needs lots of good food. He’s an amazing person. He’s learnt to speak English so fast, and his eyes are purple, deep purple, like violets, and he … he likes Star Wars.’
‘He sounds cool,’ Hazel said, her eyes narrowing under her hair. They hadn’t had a chance to talk privately yet.
‘He’s the coolest person I ever met,’ Nathan said.
Later, when Hazel and George had gone home, Annie tried to draw him out on the subject, but with little success.
‘Did he tell you where he’s from?’
‘We talked about it,’ Nathan said guardedly. And, as Annie looked expectant: ‘Mali. That’s what he said.’
‘Mali in Africa?’
‘I suppose so. Unless there’s another one somewhere. He … he wasn’t clear.’
‘I thought you said he spoke very good English,’ Annie said, a little too sharply. ‘Anyway, I never heard of people from Mali having purple eyes.’
But to this Nathan made no reply at all.
He knew he would dream of the other world that night. Meeting Eric had made it seem much more real, much closer; he almost felt that if he tried, he could enter it while awake, in a daydream not a dream, but the idea alarmed him – it was as if he was losing his hold on his own world – and he didn’t try. He drifted into a sleep that was brief and shallow, and then he was awake again, he was there, in the city. Arkatron. He knew its name now. Arkatron, city of Ynd. He was instantly conscious of being more solid than before, more visible; he struggled to think himself back into a state of disembodied awareness, but he couldn’t do it. He was in the long gallery with the twisted pillars: the artificial light made him feel very exposed. Looking down at himself, he saw he was wearing pyjamas, and it occurred to him that in future he would have to start sleeping in his clothes. He felt very unconfident about wandering round an unknown universe in his nightwear. Of course, there were precedents – the children in Peter Pan, Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker – but in a world where fiction was outlawed nobody would know them.
He moved along the gallery, darting from pillar to pillar, ready to hide at any time. At the far end, the door to the Grandir’s chamber opened and he emerged, white-masked as ever, accompanied by the purple-cowled man Nathan had seen previously in hologram. The woman Halmé walked a little behind them; she too wore a mask, a delicate etching of her own face in some dark substance which glittered subtly under the light. Her garments this time were a pale lilac and a section of her wimple was wound around her neck, shielding her throat. But he knew it was her: the mask must have been modelled on her features, and her poise, the grace of her movements were unmistakable. The two men didn’t glance his way but as she passed the pillar which concealed him she turned for a second, and looked back.
Nathan followed them as well as he could, frustrated by the difficulty of keeping out of sight. They met few other people, and those always stopped when they saw the Grandir, standing motionless, presumably out of respect, until he had moved on. This gave Nathan a moment to get under cover, or such cover as he could find, slipping round a corner, or into a doorway. They passed down many corridors, curving and intersecting like the passages in a maze, and moving staircases which swung round at the touch of a button, so you could alight in a number of different places. Halmé did not look round again, but Nathan wondered if she was aware of him. She walked always behind the men, not out of humility, he was certain, but because her thoughts were elsewhere, and their murmured exchanges did not interest her.
They went through a sliding door into a cylindrical cell which he knew was a lift. He dared not follow, he was too clearly defined; they would see him; he could only wait, half frantic at the suspense, until the lift returned. There was no illuminated panel to indicate its progress, no buttons that he could perceive, but presently the door reopened, and the lift was back, empty. He stepped inside.
The door closed and the lift began to descend immediately, though he had touched nothing. Its motion was smooth and very fast: even in that dream state his stomach seemed to be left behind. He remembered he had been inside a lift in an earlier dream, but then he must have been too insubstantial to react to it; the more solid he became, the more he responded to his surroundings. A terrible fear grew in him that the time would come when he was completely solid, and then he would be unable to wake up, but he tried to suppress it: he had fears enough to deal with for now. When the door slid back again, at the bottom of the shaft, he almost expected to find someone waiting for him. But the passage was vacant, and a single door at the end showed him the only way his quarries could have gone. There was lettering on the door, in the language of Eos. In his mind it translated as Private – No Unauthorized Entry. There was little light down here and he felt as if he must be underground, in some dim sub-basement below the city. The gloom gave him confidence: here at least he had a reasonable chance of passing unseen. He touched the door, pressing gingerly. To his surprise, it opened at once.
He found himself entering a long room which reminded him of a laboratory in a film, the kind where they did experiments on animals. There were boxes and cages along the right-hand wall, most of which appeared to be unoccupied; along the left was a range of screens and storage units. The space in between was entirely taken up with workbenches stacked with bizarre scientific equipment: oddly shaped retorts connected with convoluted glass tubing, sealed metal containers, things which might be futuristic microscopes, or telescopes or other kinds of scopes. The area was poorly lit for a laboratory and the Grandir and his two companions, at the far end, had evidently not noticed the opening of the door. Cautiously, Nathan began to move towards them, peering into the cages on his right as he went. As he had already noted, most of them were empty, but one was heaving with locust-like insects whose bodies shone with a faint, phosphorescence, while in another a gigantic black rat bared wicked teeth at him. Strangest of all, in a third there was a cat which seemed at one moment to be lying dead and the next, savagely alive, clawed at the sides of its prison. The Grandir, Halmé and purple-cowl were staring at a much larger cage at the very end of the room. Nathan slipped under an adjacent workbench and crept as close as he dared.
‘I thought there were none left,’ said purple-cowl. ‘They were wiped out a thousand years ago.’
‘Not all,’ said the Grandir. ‘I saved a few – just a few – and bred from them.’
‘But … is this prison secure?’
‘Of course. You need have no fear. The glass has been infused with threads of iron, too fine for the naked eye to see them. They cannot tolerate it.’
‘Iron?’ queried purple-cowl. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘It used to be common knowledge, in the days when such knowledge was necessary,’ the Grandir said. ‘It emits a magnetic field which can kill them. There are disadvantages to being equipped with hypersenses. They can become all but invisible, and pass through solid objects, but they react to stimuli which would not affect us.’
‘I remember now. The scent of a particular herb, the right sound level …’
Nathan crawled forward on hands and knees until he could see into the cage. He knew what was there now, but they looked different in this world. Almost solid, except if they moved, when their substance seemed to blur, becoming briefly fluid. They resembled monkeys, or so he thought at first, save that they were naked, and there was a webbing beneath their arms which extended into wings, not perhaps adequate for flight but designed to skim short distances. But their eyes were enormous, too large even for nocturnal primates, milky globes with a slitted pupil which shrank or dilated with every variation of light, and their faces were squashed into tiny triangles with no brow and little mouth, only distended nostrils in a flattened nose and outthrust ears which moved and twitched constantly. Their skin was dark, of some non-colour just short of black, and it had no sheen, no visible texture: it was as matt as shadow. There were maybe thirty or forty of them, some motionless on branch-like perches, others climbing over one another, heaving like the locusts, their bodies appearing to dissolve and blend into a single swell of movement. Nathan found that the more he stared at them, the more he found them both fascinating and horrible.
‘The cage is sound-proofed,’ the Grandir said, ‘for their own protection, and as you see, I do not allow strong light in here. They dislike even ordinary daylight, though they are not affected by the sundeath.’
‘They were made illegal,’ purple-cowl said. ‘You ratified the law.’
‘Naturally. They are very dangerous. In the wrong hands, they could do great harm. As it is, I do not use them … here.’
‘It is true then? They can pass through the dimensions?’
‘They can pass not merely between dimensions – that is a child’s trick – but between universes. All they need is an opening, a weakening of the barrier, and a reference point. These things can be engineered. Of course, not all have that ability – the genotype is unpredictable – but I have destroyed those which are of no use to me.’
Purple-cowl was silent for a minute, evidently absorbing the implications. ‘How do you control them?’ he asked. ‘Can they be trained?’
‘They respond to powerful thought-waves,’ the Grandir explained. ‘There are certain spells and rituals, some of them forbidden, which magnify the brain’s telepathic faculty, and enable the practor to control and dominate lesser minds. These creatures have hardly any mind at all – just enough for my purposes. Once subjugated, they will obey my every thought, regardless of distance or location. I can even entrance myself and see – or hear – through their senses. They are my eyes and ears in another world.’
For the first time, Halmé spoke. She had been gazing for a long time into the cage, apparently paying little attention to the discussion. ‘They are disgusting,’ she said.
‘They are useful,’ said the Grandir. Nathan had a feeling he was correcting her. ‘I find I even have a certain affection for them, as people in ancient days had for their pets. They are as werenature made them. And if we do manage to escape our doom, believe me, it will be in part – in a small part – due to them. You should not condemn them because they are not beautiful.’
She did not answer, but detached her mask and crouched down, pressing her naked face close to the glass. Gazing and gazing.
‘Don’t do that!’ the Grandir said sharply, but though he reached out, he refrained from pulling her away. ‘These are half-trained. Your face might impress them. They could become attached to you – imprinted with your image. That would be very dangerous. I have always been careful to attach them to an inanimate object or specific location.’
The cup, Nathan thought. The Grimthorn Grail. He didn’t know why or how, but he was sure of it.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, Halmé drew away and replaced her mask. Purple-cowl made a sudden movement; he had obviously been staring at her exposed face – Nathan could sense his intentness and his shock. An unmasked face must be a shock, he realized, in this world of masks and cowls. And perhaps, even here, her beauty was something special, the stuff of legend, spoken of but never seen, a jewel hidden in a secret vault. He thought of the beauties of his own world, seen continuously on television, in newspapers, in magazines, and they seemed to him shallow, creatures of plastic and celluloid, cosmetics and artifice. Here was mystery, the beauty of myth and fairytale, the face of Helen. He recalled reading the lines somewhere: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burned the topless towers of Ilium? He had never really understood how towers could be topless, but there was a magic in the words, and he could imagine them applied to Halmé. For her, the Grandir might indeed seek to tear down the barriers between the worlds, and make another Eden, a paradise beyond contamination.
As he watched her, the laboratory darkened, and he felt himself fading – thinning – dissolving back into sleep. It was a curiously slow process, as if he were unwilling to leave, and when he awoke in his own room it troubled him, because he sensed that like the gnomons he was becoming attached, not to a single place or an object but to a world, a state of being, which was not native to him. For all its troubles this alternative cosmos both excited and intrigued him, and with every dream, every materialization, he found it harder to let go.
‘We need iron,’ he told Hazel, the next day. George was out with his family and they were alone. ‘I thought of the poker by the fire, but it looks like brass, and our cutlery’s stainless steel: I don’t know how much iron there is in it.’
‘Why iron?’ Hazel demanded.
He explained about the gnomons, and his dream.
‘It’s like in the old days,’ Hazel said unexpectedly. ‘Great-grandma told me, people used to have iron to ward off bad spirits – wicked fairies – things like that. Uncle Dicky – he’s the builder – he was doing a conversion once, and he said he found all this iron stuff buried under the front door.’
‘What stuff?’ Nathan asked. ‘I can’t find anything that’s made of iron.’
‘I don’t know. Tools and things. Great-grandma said, people used horseshoes. She still has a couple: she brought them with her. There’s one on her bedroom door and one outside the attic where she … she goes sometimes. She likes to be private there.’
There was a short, significant silence. ‘Could you get them?’ Nathan said at last. ‘Borrow them, I mean. Not steal. We’d put them back.’
‘I could try. But now your mum’s found the injunction, do you really need to go back to that place?’
‘I was driven away,’ Nathan said. ‘That’s reason enough. Let’s see if your great-grandma’s out.’
In fact, Effie had gone back to her cottage, presumably to pick up something, and borrowing the horseshoes presented no problem. She must have hung them outdoors at some stage, for they were worn from weather and much handling, all sharp edges eroded, misshapen loops pierced with holes where the nails had once gone. It looked as if she had had them for a very long time. Nathan and Hazel took one each and tried putting them in their pockets, but the pockets weren’t big enough. So at Nathan’s suggestion they got some string, threaded it through one of the nail-holes, and hung them round their necks. They felt awkward and cumbersome, but it was easier than having to carry them. Then they set off for Thornyhill. ‘I’ll have to persuade Woody to show us the way again,’ Nathan said. ‘He’ll be a bit shy of you – he’s shy of me now – so you’ll have to let me talk to him alone, just to begin with. And I think we should take Hoover. Extra protection.’
‘He’s the soppiest dog on the planet,’ Hazel said. She liked Hoover, but she was in a mood to be scornful. This was an adventure where Nathan, even more than usual, seemed to be way ahead of her, and close though they were she didn’t enjoy the feeling of always tagging along behind. ‘He looks like Scooby Doo.’
‘So he’s going to be good at dealing with magic then.’
‘I don’t believe in magic,’ Hazel insisted. ‘It’s just Great-grandma muttering to herself, trying to frighten people. Other universes – that’s different. That’s science.’ And, after a pause: ‘What happened with the asylum-seeker?’
‘Eric,’ Nathan said. ‘Eric Rhindon. He’s the most extraordinary person.’
He told her everything, or everything he could remember, while they walked. At Thornyhill, they scrounged sandwiches off Bartlemy ‘for a picnic’, summoned Hoover to accompany them, and set off into the woods. Leaving the dog with Hazel, Nathan went on ahead to find Woody. Persuading the woodwose to accept his friend was less difficult than he had anticipated.
‘I know her,’ Woody said. ‘She climbs trees and just sits there for hours, very still, almost as still as me. Like an animal. She used to come here a lot. Not so much now.’ He added, greatly daring: ‘I liked her.’
Of course, thought Nathan. It’s the same as picking up language from me. He’s picked up my likes and dislikes too.
But Woody was less comfortable about Hoover. ‘The dog? He used to hunt for me, when you were little, trying to sniff me out. I’m afraid of him.’
‘He won’t hurt you,’ Nathan promised. ‘I expect, when I was a baby, he was just being protective. He doesn’t look it, but he’s a very protective dog. That’s why we’re taking him along now. He’ll protect you, too.’
Woody took some convincing – the idea of returning to the site of the former house terrified him – but eventually he agreed. ‘You mustn’t let the dog see me,’ he said, evidently torn between his various fears. ‘You see me – the girl can see me – but not him Otherwise he’ll hunt me down.’
‘All right,’ Nathan said.
Rejoining the others, he instructed Hoover accordingly. ‘He won’t understand you, stupid,’ Hazel said, but when Woody approached the dog kept his head down and his ears flattened, gazing pointedly at the ground. Woody eyed him nervously, sparing only a brief glance for Hazel.
She studied the woodwose with wary curiosity, only half believing the evidence of her own eyes. ‘What is he really?’ she whispered to Nathan as they followed him through the trees.
‘I don’t know. I think perhaps – he came from another world too. I might have brought him here, like Eric, only when I was very young.’
Hazel said nothing. She knew Nathan’s dreampower troubled him deeply, but she couldn’t help being a little envious. Contrary to her great-grandmother’s assertions, she felt she had no power of any kind. It was wonderful – it made her feel special – being his friend, but sometimes she wanted more.
The woods were the deep green of summer, sun-mottled, rippling with birdsong and insect-hum. There were wild flowers here and there: pink campion, purple nightshade, white deadnettle, yellow aconite. ‘Yellow is a warning,’ Hazel said unexpectedly. ‘Great-grandma told me. Even buttercups are poisonous to some animals.’ As they entered the Darkwood the shoulder of the hill cut off the sun for a few minutes, and there seemed to be less green, more rotten wood, old leaves, moss-grown stumps of trees long fallen. As always, the birds fell silent; a cloud of midges billowed towards them. Further down the slope Hazel’s white T-shirt was suddenly alive, coated with winged ants. Nathan called Woody to halt and brushed them off, but they still swarmed around her, ignoring Nathan’s darker clothing, and they wouldn’t leave her alone until the little troop had covered some distance. They reached their destination unawares, while Nathan was still looking for familiar landmarks. Afterwards, he wondered if the trees had moved, just a little way, or if the place looked different because it was earlier in the day, and later in the season, and woodland can change with every month, every hour. There was more sunlight, and the ridges in the ground looked slight and insignificant. He came to the drop and prepared to scramble down.
‘Last time, we stayed too long,’ Woody said. ‘I go now. If you stay, you have to deal with bad memories, bad spirits.’
‘We can deal with them,’ Nathan said. ‘We have iron.’
Woody came close, stretching out a brown finger as Nathan extracted the horseshoe from under his sweatshirt. But the woodwose flinched away from it, as if he too were adversely affected. ‘Iron is strong,’ he said, and flickered round, vanishing into the treescape in an instant.
‘Can we find the way back?’ Hazel asked.
‘Hoover can,’ said Nathan. ‘Anyway, the wood isn’t large. Get your horseshoe out and hold on to it.’
Hazel did so, glancing fearfully over her shoulder. Nathan slid down the short drop and began to feel between the root-filaments, scrabbling at the earth with his fingers, realizing too late that he should have brought a trowel. Presently, as before, his hand encountered metal. It occurred to him that it could be iron, and he wondered if that was chance, or whether it was there to keep the whisperers away. He cleared some of the soil, until he could see bars, embedded in stone, and beyond, he was certain, a darkness that wasn’t more soil but space.
‘Nathan.’ Hazel had been on her knees, peering down, watching him, but now she was standing, looking the other way. Hoover’s hackles rose; his lip lifted; the low unfamiliar growl rumbled in his throat. And there was the deadly breeze, curving towards them, ruffling last year’s leaves, nudging hanging bough and jutting twig. The murmur came with it, sibilant and soft, filling their heads with words they didn’t want to understand.
‘Keep Hoover close to you!’ Nathan adjured. ‘Hold the horseshoe out!’
The ripple of motion came to within a couple of yards before it stopped. Nathan had hoped they would be driven off, panicked into flight, but instead they circled, angrily – he could feel the anger – stirring the leaf-litter, whispering with many voices. He remembered the tiny mouth-slits, and pictured them moving in a language they themselves couldn’t comprehend, parroting a memory of some ancient impression, an echo of someone else’s thought. ‘You’ll have to hold them off,’ he told Hazel. ‘I need to dig.’
‘I don’t like this,’ she said.
‘They won’t come too close to the iron.’
‘I really don’t like this.’ She was pale, clutching the scruff of Hoover’s neck, not to restrain him but for reassurance.
Nathan returned to scraping at the soil. It seemed to take ages. Human hands, he concluded, were not designed for digging. Hazel kept saying: ‘Hurry,’ and Hoover’s muted growl persisted, and the gnomons circled and whispered, a menace seen only as a shiver in the air, a shudder in the leaves. To the right of the barred window Nathan found something which he thought might be a door, a very small door under a crumbling lintel. The wood was blackened and rotten: he could thrust his hand through it. As he had suspected, there was a space beyond, a cell perhaps, a long-forgotten dungeon buried for centuries under earth and root, exposed now by the fall of a tree and his own excavations. In his excitement, he could almost ignore the threat of the gnomons. He tried to clear the soil even faster, wrenching at the dead wood.
‘There’s something here,’ he said to Hazel. ‘Some kind of prison cell …’
The pervasive whisper surged abruptly, so that for a minute he hesitated – and in that minute he heard another sound. A scraping, pounding, wood-tearing sound. Even as he had dug down to get in, someone inside the cell was digging to get out – someone or something. Nathan drew back, and the spinning gnomons wheeled away from the iron about his neck. He climbed back up the drop to Hazel and Hoover: the dog turned its attention to whatever was emerging from underground. He barked twice, in a quick, imperative way. Nathan was remembering what Woody had told him about hearing a thumping from under the earth. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,’ he said.
There was a sudden explosion of loose soil and wood-flakes, and a shape shot out of the hollow beneath. They saw it only briefly, but it looked human, or nearly so, about four feet high, covered with bristling hair, or perhaps some of that was its clothes. The head swivelled for a second to look at them, and Nathan glimpsed a face so smothered in beard and whiskers that little skin was exposed. The eyes were squeezed to dark slots against the impact of daylight. Then the figure turned and bolted with extraordinary speed into the depths of the wood. The gnomons gathered themselves together and streamed after it.
‘That can’t have happened,’ Hazel said at last. ‘I mean, no one could be buried there, and still be alive. It just isn’t possible.’
‘I hope he’ll be all right,’ Nathan said. ‘Whoever – or whatever – he is.’
‘What do we do now?’
‘Go home, I suppose.’ After the excitement, there was a sense of anticlimax. Their breathing had shortened with the tension, but now they relaxed. Hoover flopped one ear and cocked the other, waiting for orders.
‘Home is good,’ Hazel said.