Her name was Edna.
“Like the beauty salon?”
Yes, like the sometime beauty salon turned temple.
“My husband left me a fair bit when he popped,” she explained. “And when I got to retirement I looked at this place and thought, ‘Well, I could sell it’ and Starbucks were very keen to buy, but you know Tooting has such a good, independent spirit about it I couldn’t bring myself to sell to Starbucks and I knew the Friendlies were always looking for a place and I thought, ‘Why not?’ ”
“What if Friends of the Earth had asked to buy it?” Rhys queried.
“Well, I’d probably be living in Majorca and the Friendlies would have had to go back to that Portakabin in Hammersmith,” admitted Edna. “It’s all about community responsibility.”
They sat in the Tooting Taj Mahal–Finest Indian Restaurant in London–and ate poppadoms with chutney while, just on the edge of hearing, things sizzled and spat in the kitchen. As Finest Indian Restaurants in London went, Rhys had to admit this was definitely in his top ten to make the claim, which was as common in London as Traditional Family Pubs, Authentic Home Cooking and that staple of the retail market, the Final Reduction Closing Down Sale which had lasted for nine months. The chutneys had been brought on a stainless-steel platter, and Sharon was working her way round from pasty-mild colours to vivid scorchers, trying each with the tip of her tongue and waiting thirty seconds to see if her eyes started to water. Rhys kept well clear of them all, sitting back in his chair. Sounds from Bollywood’s greatest hits drifted through the air, and on a flat-screen TV in the waiting area for takeaways, girls in yellow saris performed a dance against backgrounds that switched from mountain peaks to the busy streets of Tokyo without either narrative reason or shame.
“It began three years ago,” said Edna, cracking a poppadom on her plate with an expert rap of the knuckles. “We’re none of us shamans in the Friendlies, but we keep an eye out, of course, just to make sure the spirits of the city are all right. There’s been ups and downs–the business with Blackout was really very messy, and the death of cities–but thankfully all that fuss passed by, and it seemed to be under control. The spirits of things have their natural life cycles, as does the city that made them. It’s not like a dryad is really going to stick around once her lamp post has been demolished. And the canal wyvern can hardly keep his sheen if the water that spawned him is covered in algae, but these are just part of life’s natural flow, and, generally, things find their way.
“It started small. Gargoyles began to vanish from the sides of the churches, tribes of imps from the rubbish grounds; whole neonfly hatching grounds disappeared from the lamps around the substations. The shrieks that sit on the windowsills of newborn babies, the dream catchers and foil-winged pixies that sneak into houses at night and move your front-door keys–I personally never understood why–they… faded. Diminished. Vanished. We were concerned, of course we were, but we thought… well, it couldn’t be anything, could it? The big spirits were still there, Father Thames and Greydawn, the watchers who divide the night from the day and then…
“How do you say that a thing you cannot perceive has vanished? Greydawn was not a face or a voice, she was–she is–She Who Walks Beside. I don’t want to judge, dear, but you seem like a girl who might know what I’m talking about when I say there’s a 4 a.m. feeling. It’s a sense you have at four o’clock in the morning, in the city, when all the lights are out–even the lights for the tourists, Big Ben and the London Eye and all those, they’re dark too. And you walk down the middle of the street because you can, where during the day there would be traffic, and nothing moves, nothing stirs all around you and you know are you alone, and it is invigorating, it is marvellous, it is wonderful and it is terrifying all at once because you are tiny and squashed beneath this great silence and the city and then you look up and… and you know you aren’t alone. Not really. Not ever. Not in a city.
“She walks beside you.
“Greydawn. Our Lady of 4 a.m. She walks beside you and puts her hand in yours; and you never hear it, you never see her, but she’s the one who whispers in your ear without words, Don’t be afraid. I am with you. She is the keeper of the city wall, the guardian of the gate, she keeps your fears of what might be from becoming the truth of what simply is.
“And she’s… gone.” Edna almost choked on the word. “She vanished in the night and now the gates are opening and… things are coming through that should not be crawling out of the night, and the only shaman in London is a goblin. I mean, a goblin! And not just any goblin, a goblin who managed to anger the Seven Sisters and the Bag Lady and the Beggar King all at once with his ridiculous arguments with Blistering Steve… and… the Friendlies should do something, but we don’t know what to do.
“I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to burden you with all this. Shall we talk about you?”
Rhys recognised this question. It was a staple of his disastrous time trying to succeed at online dating, a phrase which politely informed the other person that he knew he’d blown it and hoped she didn’t mind. Dating, when you were a druid, was never easy, he liked to tell himself.
“Uh… okay. ‘I’m Sharon, I work in a coffee shop.’ Actually, I guess I should say worked in a coffee shop. I’ve probably been fired by now.”
“Oh no! What happened?”
“Failed to turn up to work.”
“Why?”
Sharon stared at Edna and wondered exactly what it was about her own demeanour that appeared so un-shamany. “Um… saving the city?” she prompted.
“Oh yes, of course! That does make sense. And forgive me asking, but how long have you been a shaman?”
Sharon hesitated, a mouthful of chutney halfway to her lips. She put her piece of poppadom back down on the plate, wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, “Are we talking, like, how long I’ve been walking through walls, or how long I’ve been getting the training?”
“You need training to be a shaman?” asked Edna. “I thought shamans just… knew.”
Sharon groaned. “Why do people always say that? Everywhere I go they say that, and I am having it up to here with this whole ‘Sharon knows shit’ shit. Sorry, no offence there.”
“None taken, dear. But you are meant to see the truth of things, aren’t you? Isn’t that what it’s about?”
“But what does that mean?”
“I think, Ms Li,” put in Rhys, “that when you are in touch with the spirit world, as I’m sure you are, then maybe you’re supposed to see things that no one else sees. See?”
Sharon hesitated. “Does, uh, does a guy called Dez count?”
“Um… is Dez transparent?” asked Rhys.
“Kinda. He’s my spirit guide.”
“Your spirit guide is called Dez?” There wasn’t shock or condemnation in Rhys’s voice, but rather the careful tones of a man who really, really wanted to make sure he’d understood a difficult concept.
“Look,” exclaimed Sharon, “this isn’t about Dez. We’re talking about Greydawn vanishing and that, so please can we just move on from my knowing shit, or not knowing shit, or whatever the shit is I’m supposed to do?”
There was a silence in which eyes examined napkins and fingers fidgeted around the edge of plates. Sharon shuffled in her chair, then added, “Sorry. I’m getting a little stressed. I read a book which said you should try breathing really slow, but that just gets me breathless. Can I ask, how’d you go about ‘vanishing’ spirits anyway?”
“Depends on the spirit, dear,” said Edna. “Your local household protector, your little guardian spirit–you could steal its nest, smoke it out, summon it, without too much effort–most wizards would know how. But Greydawn… she’s one of the powers of the city, and she’s not defenceless. She has a dog.”
Sharon’s lifted her head; on her face were the beginnings of suspicion. “Mr Roding mentioned… What dog?”
“It’s how she’s symbolically represented. A woman with a dog. It might just be a romantic ideal, but there was always a certain… darker side, shall we say, to Greydawn’s nature. She doesn’t keep the nightmares at bay by being just a harmless zephyr. There has been blood associated with her. We don’t talk about it in the Friendlies of course, dear; it’s rather unpleasant for our tastes. But if our Lady of 4 a.m. is a protector of the lonely in the night, then Dog is the stick with which she might be said to do her beating. Not that it really should affect us, as Dog, like most creatures she protects us from, lives in the shadows, in the places where only the shamans go. So really it’s not worth getting worked up about.”
“Lived,” corrected Sharon.
“Pardon, dearest?”
“Lived,” she repeated. “Lived in the shadows, the places where the shamans go. But now Greydawn is gone, you said yourself. So… things can start getting through, yeah? Things that shouldn’t be, coming out of the dark. Like Dog.”
Edna didn’t speak, thinking it through. Rhys leaned forward, for all the world like a fascinated child about to hear something forbidden and possibly gross.
“Perhaps,” conceded Edna at last, “it is… possible.”
“Don’t look back. It wants you to look back.”
“What’s that, dear?”
Sharon’s head jerked up from her contemplation of the table. She was surprised to find Rhys and Edna both staring at her with an expression of tight concentration. “What?”
“You said, ‘Don’t look back. It wants you to look back,’ Ms Li,” offered Rhys.
“Did I?”
“Yes, and it was very shaman-like,” he added, turning to Edna for reassurance. “Didn’t you think it was very shaman-like? I mean, this glassy look you had on your face was really spiritual, and I’m not saying you usually look glassy because you don’t, you look really nice. I mean, not nice, I mean of course nice, but nice doesn’t really imply what aaaahh… aaahhh…”
Sharon and Edna leaned away as Rhys’s face began to contract.
“You know, sweetie, I hate to suggest the obvious,” said Edna. “But anti-histamines really are wonderful things.”
“They… they make me… make me dr… drow—”
“They make him drowsy,” said Sharon. “This dog of Greydawn’s–if it was here, I mean, if it really had, like, come out of the shadows or whatever, what do you think it’d do?”
“I imagine he’d look for his mistress,” mused Edna as Rhys buried his face in his napkin. “That would be my first response, if I was a living spirit of rage and blood tasked with protecting the guardian of the wall.”
“Rage and blood?” squeaked Sharon.
“Why yes, dear. Of course.”
“No one said nothing about rage and blood!”
“Well, what did you expect? It’s all very well having a spirit who walks beside lonely travellers in the dead hours of the night, a guardian who protects her flock, but this is London. There has to be some blood somewhere. There was a rumour—”
“What about candy floss and teddy bears?” demanded Sharon, banging her fist on the table. “Why couldn’t this Dog be a nice kind of terrier or something? Or rabbits–I was distinctly promised rabbits would come up in all this.”
“There was a rumour,” Edna went on, “that Greydawn was once a spirit of sacrifice, not protection. In the old days, when the Temple of Mithras was still standing, a gift of blood was rather more appreciated. Naturally we’ve grown more civilised since then, but blood has always been potent. Derek would know more about this, of course.”
“Who’s Derek?”
Edna’s fingers flexed uneasily in her lap. Her face turned down and aside, as if deflecting an invisible blow. “He’s… well, he’s the high priest,” she confessed. “Well, we don’t like to say ‘priest’, so he was appointed high social secretary of the Friendlies; but everyone knows he’s the high priest really. He knows about all of this business.”
“Hold on… I thought you were the high priestess.”
Edna shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I am, dear, but only really on an… acting basis, if you see what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Whoa there, gonna stop you right now. I know that ‘well’. That was the ‘well’ my careers adviser used when I asked her why I couldn’t be a biomechanical engineer in space. Besides, I know what it means when people go ‘well’ like that. It means ‘I’ve got this really nasty problem, like maybe it’s so nasty I don’t want to tell you about it, so just leave it alone even though I know you ain’t gonna leave it alone.’ Well, lady–” Sharon’s finger was out, the trembling finger of pure indignation, the pointing finger of a thwarted general who can’t believe her troops won’t Go Get That Cannon “–screw your ‘well’ because, like you said, it’s all gone to crap, hasn’t it, with Greydawn missing and spirits missing and buildings dying and cities withering. So don’t you give me this ‘well’, and you just tell me about Derek.”