Arcadia (54 page)

“Don't be shy,” she says. “I won't eat you.” She adjusts herself a little, tucking her hair behind her ear. The bones whisper and sigh beneath her.

“Hi,” Rory says, keeping his distance. Maybe there's another way in somewhere.

“That's a start,” the girl says. “I suppose.”

“Is this the gate?” says Rory.

She gestures towards the pair of stone posts in the massive hedge. “It is.” Her arm moves to wave at the pile she's sitting on. “And these are all the people who tried to get in. I pick the bones from my branches and pile them up here. Even the fiddly little ones. Look.” She plucks up something too small for Rory to see and holds it between thumb and forefinger. “Inner ear.”

“How do I get in then?”

“You don't, silly. You want to, but you don't. Well”—she pouts—“he does.”

The owl's come feathering along the lane behind. Rory turns in time to see it sweep up into the trees over the barricade of thorns and drop down out of sight on the other side.

“But he doesn't really count, because he's turned into a bird and can't turn back again. So that makes him actually just a bird, doesn't it. Birds come and go as they please. They don't
want
to get in it. They don't really want anything, not properly. Isn't your other friend going to say hello?”

Silvia's sat down in the road, as if she's guessed they're not going anywhere for a while. “She can't,” Rory says. “I think she's forgotten how to speak. I'm taking her to the well.”

“The well whose water cures every illness of body or soul?”

“Yeah.”

“But that's inside.”

“I know.”

“You're not allowed inside.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's what you want. Never mind, you won't understand, no one does. I'm just the barrier anyway. Why won't you tell me your name?”

“Rory,” he says. “It's Scottish.”

“You're Scottish?”

“No. The name is. Rory.”

“Your name's Scottish but you aren't? How does that work?”

There's something funny about Rose's teeth. He sees it in glimpses while she's talking, between her very red, very pretty lips. “Dunno,” he says. “Why shouldn't I be? You can be called anything, can't you.”

“
Can
you?” she says, delighted.

“Obviously. Like my sister Scarlet, that's not Scottish.”

“Is she red?”

“What d'you mean, red?”

“Scarlet. You said your sister was Scarlet.”

“'Course not. It's just her name. She's dead anyway.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.”

“It's all right,” Rory says, rather embarrassed.

“Is it? I suppose it must be if it happens to everyone.”

Rory's head is starting to feel thick with frustration. He remembers the nasty warty root-thing telling him he'd never be able to get in but he assumed it was just being bad-tempered. There must be a way in. What would be the point of coming all this way if he was stuck now?

“It's nice to talk,” Rose says. “No one's come for a long time.” She picks up a big bone and turns it over in her hands thoughtfully. “Even when they did they didn't usually talk much. Most of them had gone mad.”

Rory makes the mistake of looking at the pile. A pair of huge eye sockets looks back at him.
I was a person once,
the skull tells him, silently.
I got this far, and no farther.

“Did you really kill all these people?”

“My petals are oh so soft,” Rose says. “But my thorns are oh so hard.” She gives Rory a quick grin, letting him see her teeth properly. Each one of them comes to a sharp point. Her mouth is full of little white fangs. He can't help himself. He shies back a step, horrified. She laughs.

“People usually only want to think about the pretty parts,” she says. She sits taller in a way which makes the hem of her dress come up over her knees. It's only a little wriggle but for some reason it makes Rory feel acutely uncomfortable. “ ‘Oh, a rose,' they say. ‘How lovely. I want to put my face in it and sniff sniff sniff.' Then they get all tangled up.”

“You're actually a rose?”

She sighs and slumps, disappointed.

“How come you look like a girl, then?”

“It's always got to be one thing or the other with you people.”

He thought it was a perfectly reasonable question but he's made her cross now. “Sorry,” he says quickly, thinking about her teeth.

“Is it or isn't it. This or that, yes or no. I'm sure that's why most of them”—she flips the bone she's holding up, lets it spin once in the air, and catches it again—“were mad by the time they got this far. Asking all the wrong questions until their brains went
pop
. ‘Where am I? What's going on? Why can't I go back the way I came? What does it all mean?' ” The bone's thicker than her arm but she braces it in her hands and snaps it in half with no effort at all,
crack
. “Is that what happened to your friend? I bet it is.”

Rory looks back at Silvia. She's still sitting in the road, hands in her pockets, looking at nothing in particular, like one of the Riders' horses after they'd been tied up.

“No, actually.”

“Really?”

“No. She always knew what she was doing. Where she was going.”

“So what's wrong with her?”

“I think the problem is she got there.”

Rose puts the broken halves of the bone gently back down on the pile between her knees.

“You're not stupid, are you?”

“Everyone says I'm stupid.” Well, Ol always did.

“Shall I explain about this place? Maybe you will understand after all, a little bit.”

“The Valley?”

She nods towards the clogged gateway. “This place. Pendurra. Where magic lives. You see, for a long time it was secret because nobody knew about it. They didn't need a barrier then. Anyone could have come in, because no one wanted to. I just lived quietly in a back garden. We all did. We all lived inside, and no one knew anything about it, and no one cared. Everyone was happy. Happy enough, anyway.”

When Rose doesn't add anything, Rory says: “What then?”

She smooths her dress. “Then someone from outside came to live here, and got curious. A person, a woman. She started wondering how it worked. She wanted to know more. She wanted to find the secret.” Her voice is still pretty but it's gone solemn. It's like the difference between pretty Kate in the portrait in the big room in the Abbey and the real Kate, the same face but serious and capable. “And so they Fell.”

There's a long pause. Rose is watching him, so he finds himself looking around. He can't see a cliff or anything.

“Fell where?”

“Not where, silly. They Fell. They just Fell. You know. Dropped from the zenith like a falling star. Earth felt the wound. That sort of Fall.” Baffled, Rory looks up at the misty evening sky. “And that's what made it a different kind of secret, you see. Because now everyone knows. Pendurra's just the same, but now everyone wants to find it. So instead of just sitting here forgotten, it's closed. It's forbidden. Do you see? It's just like what you said about your friend. It's once people know what they want that they're doomed.”

“I don't know what you're on about.”

“Exactly. I bet that's why you've made it so far. You don't have the faintest idea what you're doing in the Valley, do you?”

“But I'm taking Silvia to the well—”

“—whose water cures every illness of body or soul, yes. And since that's the one thing you do want, it's the thing you're not going to find, because I won't let you in. But I'll bet you anything that's not why you entered the Valley. Is it? You probably didn't even know about Pendurra, did you?”

He has to admit he didn't.

“In fact,” Rose says, and she's gone back to being girly-pretty now, “I expect you didn't even mean to enter the Valley at all. Am I right? You can tell me, I won't laugh.”

He tries to remember how he got here. All he can remember is running in witless terror until his lungs were on the edge of bursting. He can't remember crossing any border.

“Do you know,” she says softly, ruffling the bones by her knees as if stroking sand, “you're the first person who's ever got here by accident. It's a kind of innocence.”

He's no closer to understanding what Rose is talking about but he seizes on the wistful tone in her voice. It's almost as if she likes him.

“Maybe you could let me in, then,” he says. “As a special thing.”

She shakes her head. “No. I've told you now. I've spoiled it.”

“Told me what? You haven't told me anything. I don't get what you're saying at all.”

“That you're here. Pendurra. This is it. The heart of everything. Where all the magic in the world was locked up for five hundred years, all quiet and forgotten. Where you can be a girl and a rose at the same time. Where the house never rots and the springs never fail and everything is properly itself. Even grief.”

Rory stares.

“But . . .” He struggles to get the thought straight. He's got to get her back to whatever it was that made her talk sweetly to him. “I don't care about any of that. I don't want magic wishes or anything. I'm only trying to take Silvia to that well. I'll leave as soon as she's better, I swear.”

Rose breaks into a delicious peal of laughter.

“I swear,” Rory mutters, humiliated. “I will.”

“Oh dear.” She's wiping her eyes, trying to stifle giggles. “I'm sorry. Poor you.”

“What.”

“Do excuse me . . . That's the only thing you want? To find the well?”

“Yeah. I swear.”

“The thing you want more than anything else in the whole world?”

“Y—”

Her shoulders stop jiggling. Her mouth settles straight.

“You see?” she says, not cruelly.

“What,” he says again, though he thinks he does get it, after all.

“You're not innocent anymore,” she says. “You want something. You've Fallen too. That's why the gate's closed to you, and always will be.”

“But—”

“I'm sorry,” she says. “You can stay if you want, though. We can go on talking.”

Rory's mouth is open but he can't think of any more answers. He slumps down next to Silvia, dejection and exhaustion taking their toll.

“But what about her?” he says.

“There's no way in,” Rose says. “It's forbidden. I really am sorry. I can see you care about your friend, it's sweet. Wait.” She sits straighter, causing a clattering tremor in the pile. Some vertebrae jiggle loose and bounce down the side of the heap. “What's that?”

“What?”

“That. That she's holding.”

Silvia's pulled the crucifix out of her pocket and is looking at it again as if it might start talking to her.

“That?” Rory looks up at Rose and sees a change. The girl's gone tense. Something's different. He hasn't a clue what it is but in his desperation it feels like a tiny advantage, a possibility. He seizes it as best he can and tries the same trick that seemed to work on Phil the fox. “That thing? It's from a god, actually.”

“Let me see.” Rose is straining her neck forward, hands on her knees. “Bring it here.”

“You can come and look if you want. It's special.”

Rose uncurls herself and slides down the pile onto the road, bones slipping noisily after her. At ground level (and with her mouth closed) she looks less alarming. She's hardly taller than Rory, and very slight. She nudges a skull aside with her bare toes and approaches.

“I want to see it properly.”

Rory swallows. He remembers the moment the fox hesitated. If there's any sort of opportunity here, he's got to sound like he knows what he's talking about.

“You can't just say it like that,” he says, standing up. “You've got to have respect. It's from a god, like I said. One of his names is Destroyer. I spoke to him. Earlier on. He said he was . . .” Rory's winging it. He can't stop now. He tries to remember what the terrible god said, when he was at his most terrible. “He was In Violet.”

Rose gives him a surprisingly withering look for such a young-looking woman. “What are you talking about?” But it's all right, she's not really listening to him. All she cares about is the crucifix. “Show me.”

Silvia snatches it away, frowning. Rose bares her teeth and hisses.

“All right.” Rory hurriedly gets between them. He takes Silvia's hands and does what he did before, unpeeling the fingers one by one, saying “All right, all right” all the time, like he's soothing a dog, and at the same time trying to think of the right thing to say to Rose. Silvia lets him take the statuette, though when her hands are empty she stares at the space where it used to be as if wondering what just happened. He turns and shows it to Rose. He's got to try something, right now.

“It came from—”

“His mother,” Rose says, almost whispering. She touches the crucifix with a finger. She's standing almost on top of Rory. She smells amazing, like a mixture of the human body with the sweetest food ever invented. “His mother, and their sister.” She looks up at Rory. Her eyes are full of wonder. “This is hers.”

Anything he says is just going to break the spell. Not daring to breathe yet, he just nods, as if he knew that already, obviously.

“Where did that woman get it?”

“From a god. I told you.”

“It's another sign,” Rose says. She looks like she might be about to cry. Cry with joy, that is. “First Corbo and now this. And look at my blossoms. I flowered for him when he first came here, to welcome him to his proper place. He must be coming back. He must be. He's coming home.” She smiles. It's horrible, with her fangs, and yet somehow lovely too. “At last.”