Advent (30 page)

 
‘Help me.’ It was scarcely louder than a breath. He felt the tears pushing up again.

 
‘Can’t.’

 
Of course not. He was alone, finally utterly alone. The thing in the dark wasn’t real. He should know better. Except that he didn’t know anything at all.

 
‘Who am I?’

 
‘Sad boy. Stupid boy. Names,
aaaarrkk
. Lots more.’

 
But this time he had meant the question only for himself. It was the thing he didn’t know, the hole in the middle of him. He’d never known it was there, the hole, until Mum and Dad and everyone had starting telling him about it. Even then he hadn’t asked himself the question. Not until now, when everything else had gone.

 
He didn’t really hear the reply from the dark, because as soon as the question was whispered aloud he remembered another answer, spoken by another voice, a voice like dead leaves.

 
The girl, a changeling. The boy, an orphan, and ward of her you seek.

 
He sat unmoving, eyes wide open.

 
After a long, long time he said, ‘Corbo?’

 
‘Yes yes.’

 
‘What’s a ward?’

 
‘Ward.
Wrrkk
. Belonging thing.’

 
But he hadn’t really needed to ask. He read a lot, he always had. It was a way of surviving as an only child in an unhappy home. Mr Bushy had noticed it and steered him towards some Victorian novels, library books with fusty slow-starting stories that he was always just about to give up on when they suddenly got interesting and he ended up needing to know what would happen and spending weeks reading to the finish. One of them had featured a ward. It stuck with him: the idea of a child who didn’t really belong to their parents, who was just surviving until the time when their inheritance would come and the people they’d thought of as their mother and father would be revealed to have no connection with them at all, no power over them.

 
Orphan.

 
Here, in the dark, was his wish coming true?

 
Ward of her you seek.

 
He mouthed her name to himself soundlessly, afraid that saying it aloud might break the spell:
Miss Grey
.

 
Old mad witch. Miss Grey, who wasn’t real, so they said, except to him. Miss Grey, whose worn and patient face was unchanging, ageless. Miss Grey, who had shocked him by suddenly raving aloud.

 
‘Corbo?’

 
‘Yes yes.’

 
‘This witch,’ he said slowly. ‘You mean . . . she’ll come here . . . because of me?’

 
‘Could do.’

 
‘And then what?’

 
‘Gets killed.’

 
He froze.

 
‘What?’

 
‘Gets killed.’

 
His heart and mouth turned to stone together.

 
For the first time since inviting him to drink from the pool, the thing spoke unprompted. ‘Told you. Bad time.’

 
‘Corbo.’ The strangled grip had closed round his throat again, the dread. ‘Let me out.’

 
‘Can’t.’

 
He rattled the door behind him again. ‘Please. Let me out. Please.’

 
‘Can’t. Locked.’

 
‘Who—’ He shoved himself against the door, but its ancient timbers were far tougher than him. ‘Why—’ The wind picked up again outside, out in the open, moaning more fiercely. ‘Who wants to kill—’

 
‘Names. Can’t say.’

 
‘But why?’ He was crouching on his feet, tight against the door, fingers roaming for the lock. ‘Why would anyone—’

 
‘Told you. Bad time. Bad beginning. Your sort,
ccraaak
. Too much wanting. Do this, do that. Do without suffer. Take without give. Same old same old.’

 
The answer went over his head like birdsong. He found a patch of rough metal. He plucked uselessly at it. ‘There must be . . .’ He was completely blind; he couldn’t even figure out the shape of the door. ‘There’s got to be—’

 
An abrupt commotion of rustling and scraping made him sink to his knees in terror.

 
‘Man coming,’ croaked the voice, much nearer. ‘No talk.’

 
‘No. Don’t—’

 
The blackness took shape. A mass of it came towards him; atop it, something glinted like a fragment of polished slate. Everything happened at once. There was a lull in the wind, and he heard footsteps outside, moving through the wood. At the same time something locked round his wrists: a fierce grip that pressed and curled like fingers but had no warmth or softness. The grasp jerked him upwards. He saw a thin and strangely bent black arm, and, before he was dragged out of the sanctuary of feeble light, a gleaming round eye, and he smelled breath that reeked of sour meat and earth. The arm was appallingly strong. It pulled him away from the door as if he was made of paper.

 
‘No talk,’ the voice grated, right by his ear. He was dragged deep into the shadow to one side of the door. He would have collapsed had its grip not stayed clamped on his arm. ‘No talk. No sound.’ With paralysing horror he felt a touch on his neck, some beaked and bony part of its face nudging his bare skin.

 
Heavy steps trod through the sodden leaves towards the door and stopped. There came a rattle – a key in a lock – and a heavy creak. The door was opening.

 
The sound and smell of the twilit wood rushed in. Through blurry eyes Gavin saw a dark oblong swing towards him, silhouetted by a chilly pallor that was more welcome to him at that moment than any sunrise. The thing had dragged him behind the door so that it blocked his view as it opened. He couldn’t see the man at the entrance, breathing hard as if he’d been running. An old man’s breath, shaky.

 
The last dusk light fell into the chapel through the door and for the first time Gavin saw something of where he was. Two squat columns flanked the pool, which was a hexagon of darkness in the middle of the space, a hole opening into nothing. There was no altar, no furniture, nothing more than a couple of smudgy rectangles against the back wall which must once have been pictures, now decayed almost to invisibility.

 
On the far side of the pool from the door, just where Gav had seen it before, a small old-looking box lay on the bare stone, its hinged top open. Behind it was a scrap of glinting fractured metal, a small mirror, its surface shivered with cracks. They were the only things to see. Gav could almost feel the man’s eyes falling on them.

 
‘Ah, God,’ the man said, in a broken whisper.

 
The outside air blew in and drifted against Gav’s cheek, exquisitely precious. His heart sank in despair as he heard the man shift, turn round. Barely daring to breathe, he fixed his eyes on the edge of the door as if the force of his gaze alone could hold it still.

 
The door began to swing closed. Gavin couldn’t help himself. He twitched forward, terrified of losing the light again. At once the hideous grasp tightened. His gasp was drowned out by the scrape of the hinges. The latch clanked shut.

 
The steps started up again and faded. Now that he could do nothing but listen, he was sure he recognised their unhappy cadence, and the catch of grief in the voice. It was Tristram Uren who had made his way here, seen whatever it was he needed to see, and was now limping away.

 
The pressure against his neck eased and then the grip released him. He crumpled down onto stone.

 
‘Gone,’ said the voice, above him.

 
Gav crouched on hands and knees, shivering.

 
‘Didn’t lock,’ it added.

 
He looked up. His eyes hadn’t yet readjusted to take in the tiny sliver of fading twilight under the door; he couldn’t see a thing. It was true, though. He’d surely heard the noise of the key turning in the lock before Tristram had opened it. He hadn’t heard it again afterwards.

 
After a careful pause he said, ‘Corbo?’

 
‘Yes yes.’

 
‘Can I go?’

 
‘
Aaaaark
. Not locked.’

 
‘Will you . . . will you stop me if I try and leave?’

 
Again he was unnerved by the long pause before it answered. He had a strange feeling that it was struggling with its reply.

 
‘No no,’ it said at last.

 
He crawled a few inches towards the door. The thing did not move behind him. He went on until his groping hand felt wood. Very slowly, he stood up and found the latch.

 
‘Um,’ he said, ‘do you . . . ?’

 
Silence.

 
‘Do you want to come out too?’

 
‘
Wraaaaa
.’ A rough-edged, passionless groan. ‘Want, yes. Go, no. Take your chance.’

 
He inched the door open. Sweet wild windblown air poured over him, and he saw the crowns of trees tossing against a sky whose last blue had almost surrendered to black.

 
‘Um,’ he said, unsure where to look, ‘Corbo. Thanks.’

 
‘Suffer for it,’ the voice croaked. Already it sounded small. The tumult of the wood overrode it.

 
‘I’m sorry,’ Gav said.

 
‘Go. Learn fast. Worse next time.’

 
He stepped out into the open and began to run.

Thirteen

It was all
he could do to keep his footing. The path was barely visible. He ran full pelt through slippery stony three-quarter darkness, gasping aloud each time a twig plucked at his legs or arms. Behind the screen of trees to his right, slow-moving water turned the dusk into a sinister velvet glimmer. He couldn’t believe how dense and alive the dark was. He fought back the urge to call for help. Anything might come, anything: the croaking clawed thing, the other thing he wouldn’t let himself think about, or not until he’d got himself away, far away.

 
Try knowing better than that, he told himself savagely. Just try!

 
He sprinted faster. He tripped more than once, tumbling into the mulch of muddy leaves, scrabbling up again. The scrapes on his hands stung against clammy earth. He looked over his shoulder: nothing but whispering black. He blundered on. He tried to remember the way he’d come with Marina but nothing looked the same, it was all just deep shadow, and anyway that was in another world, a lifetime ago.

 
A slit of lesser darkness appeared ahead. At the sight of that break in the trees he forced himself to go faster, afraid it might vanish.

 
Quite suddenly he was out of the wood, a purple-black sky opening above him. He ran into the field. Above, the outline of the ancient house squatted against the horizon like a stone beast. Firelight sputtered behind the lower windows. For a moment he thought he saw someone moving in a corner room. He raised his head, slid on the wet matted grass and fell heavily. The evening damp clung to him as he scrambled to his feet again. Legs and lungs began to burn; stopping had made them worse.