Arcadia (63 page)

“So, like, Them. The mermaids. They were always there, all along? But no one noticed?”

“It's amazing what you can choose not to know,” Gawain says, which is sort of answering the question but also sort of not, leaving Rory stuck again.

He pokes around belowdecks for a while. It's a lot nicer than the boat he sailed in with Silvia and Per and Lino. It's very empty and bare but it doesn't have that stale plastic smell. Gawain's told him where some warmer clothes are stored. They all turn out to be too big but he's used to that from the Stash on Home. He finds a thick fleece sweater with a big collar. It goes down almost to his knees and up over his neck. There's a picture of a leaping killer whale on the back.

He wonders what they're going to say when they see him sailing into the Gap. It takes a lot to surprise Kate but he's betting she'll be completely speechless for once. He wonders how much he's going to tell them. He might leave out the bits about meeting God. It just makes things more complicated.

He looks out a porthole and sees the tops of the satellite dishes like warts on the line of the horizon. When they make magic go back where it came from, will that stop the Plague? Will those dishes start bouncing messages around the world again, instead of sitting like dead faces turned to the heavens where the bad god lives? He spots a few people down at the shore, on one of the slivers of beach beneath the overgrown cliffs. Women, they must be, or they wouldn't come close to the water. Digging clams, maybe. They all straighten and watch the boat sail past. He wonders if they'll go back and tell everyone else that it's a sign. There are boats on the sea. The curse is breaking. He wonders where Ellie and Soph are, if they're anywhere. The beast didn't kill him, so maybe it didn't kill them either. At least he managed to cut them free.

He comes back on deck just as the sea roughens. The swell's rising. The coast beside them is coming to a blunt stop, and beyond it the waves are hills and valleys. Gawain swings the boat around a steepling block of land surmounted by a lighthouse, turning to put the wind behind them.

“Looks like we're being blown west, more or less,” Gawain says, peering at a compass mounted beside the wheel. “Seems about right.”

Their course begins leaving the land behind. The coast withdraws to starboard, becoming a long thin colorless line bracketing the view north. Gulls come out to investigate their passage. Rory discovers he feels a bit less sick if he stays on deck. The swell's strong but even. There's a sort of rhythm to it which he could almost get used to. He shades his eyes despite the clouds and studies the receding land. There are the satellite dishes again, the only interruption to its low profile, until . . .

He peers, clinging to the cabin hatch with his free hand.

“Is that the Mount?”

“Saint Michael's Mount? Looks like it. Yes.”

It must be twenty miles off, right at the limit of the huge bay that's opened out to starboard, but the shape stands out even so. He thinks he can even see hints of the buildings that crown it. He tries to picture himself sitting on the beach beyond it, in the shelter of a looted container, waiting to meet Silvia again, with no idea that she's abandoned him. No idea of anything, really.

He
can
see the buildings on the Mount, miles distant though it is. The shine of a wet gable, the dewdrop sparkle of glass. They must be catching a shaft of sunlight from a distant break in the clouds. It's beautiful, the only speck of color in a world of greys. It's almost like a lighthouse, but warm and soft like flame, not with the hard brilliance of electric light.

“Look.”

Gawain looks. There's an abrupt lurch in the wind. The boom slackens and yanks.

There's something about Gawain's expression Rory doesn't like.

“What?” he says.

Gawain looks up at the sails, frowning. As if on cue, the wind hesitates again. The jib folds and flaps uncertainly.

The gleam on the Mount is intensifying. It looks as if it's caught in its own private sunset, picked out by a ruddy spotlight. Or—

“Is that fire?”

Gawain lets go of the wheel. Completely lets go of it. Rory never sailed as much as Dad and Jake but he's pretty sure you're not supposed to do that. The whole boat's turned limp and useless. The swell's picking them up and dropping them still, but its rhythm has gone. It feels like they're driftwood. The boom thunks from side to side, following the rocking of the waves. Quite suddenly, there's no wind at all.

“What's happening?”

Gawain comes forward, ducking, and crouches at the base of the mast. “Let's take down the sails,” he says. He sounds weary. “Though I don't think it'll make any difference.”

“To what? What are you doing that for?” He's already started, though, loosening knots and pulling in an armful of canvas. The boat's wallowing horribly.

“We've lost the wind,” he says. “Look over there.”

The far-off light around the Mount's become an aura. It's too deep and rich for any sunlight and too intense for fire. It's a reddening of air. It's also growing, fanning out slowly, like blood in water. No, Rory realizes, not spreading. It only looks that way because it's coming closer.

He's about to repeat his stupid question,
What's that?
but doesn't, first because his throat's gone tight, and second because he knows what it is. He recognizes it.

What was it Gawain just said?
It's amazing what you can choose not to know.
Did Rory simply choose to forget Per in the night, his face burnished with the weird light from his magic staff, and a hideous alien voice coming from his mouth saying,
It is mine
? When did he decide not to think about the man-shaped phantom of flame that came into the room where he slept with Sandra and Soph and begged him to be its master, and then mocked him when he refused? It told him it was going to find someone else. And it also warned him they'd meet again.

There's nothing to do except hang on and watch. Gawain's winding in the mainsail, unhurriedly but busily. The red-gold glow is blazing towards them. It's beginning to fill the sky to the north. Fiery ghosts, arrowing over the sea, coming for some kind of reckoning.

The jib bellies suddenly. The boat tugs forward, slapping the side of a wave, tipping hard. Rory feels a warm wind on his face. It's changed direction entirely. The bow's been pushed around to face north, towards the unholy light. He clutches at a stay and reaches for the wheel.

“Don't,” Gawain says.

“But it's forcing us—”

“It won't help.”

He's very calm. He doesn't look the slightest bit frightened, though Rory's own heart is trying to push itself up his throat and out his mouth.

“What is that?”

“An old acquaintance.”

“Is it all right, then?”

“No. Definitely not all right.”

This isn't at all what Rory hoped he'd say. The weird warm breeze is gathering strength, pushing them hard now across the chop, northwards towards the distant shore and the burning light. It's becoming noisy, whistling in a way that isn't quite right for wind.

“What if we get the jib down?”

“We might as well leave it. There's still time.”

“Time? For what?”

Gawain looks at him. “For you to make your decision.”

Rory's so astonished he forgets he's supposed to be frightened. He tries to say
Me?
but can only mime it, so all that happens is his mouth drops open.

The problem with the sound of the wind is that it has voices in it, sinister hollow whispers. The red stain to the north is gathering. It's bright enough now to make a reflection, capping the swell with crests of molten metal.

“I gave the ring to you to look after,” Gawain says. “Someone gave it to me once, and I didn't know what I was doing either when I accepted it. Not even slightly. Don't worry. It's that sort of gift.”

Rory bumps down onto the deck and clutches at his pocket.

“The problem is,” Gawain goes on, rather absently, as if this were all happening somewhere else, or in a book, “that there are people who want it. Badly. I don't need to tell you that, you've met some of them. Silvia's friends. You've seen what they'll put up with to try and get hold of it.”

“Here,” Rory says. He's trying to get his hand in the pocket. The oversized sweater's getting in the way and his fingers are stiff in the sea chill. “You take it. OK?”

“That's one thing you could do,” Gawain says. He sounds absurdly thoughtful, as if he doesn't mind at all about the fact that some demon thing is streaking over the sea towards them.

“I don't know what's going on. I don't know anything about it. I don't want it.” He can't find the stupid pocket. He's sitting too scrunched up. He tries to kneel but the boat's tipping violently now, driven by the evil wind. “It's nothing to do with me.”

“Hardly.”

“It's not. I'm nobody.”

“You brought Silvia and her companions here. You found the crucifix that belonged to my mother. You walked into the Valley. No one else has ever done that and lived. You walked into Pendurra. No one can do that either, it's forbidden. You know Marina. You've seen a god. Silvia ran into you thousands of miles from here, on the day my mother vanished. That was before you were born, Rory, and you know as well as I do Silvia's not lying. Everywhere any of us turns, there you are.”

There are occasional moments when Gawain seems like he might not be completely serious. This definitely isn't one of them. He means it.

“But,” Rory says, “none of that's because of me. I didn't do anything. It just turned out like that.”

“How else does anything happen?”

“But you know all about magic and that. I'm just . . . I'm not special.”

“And I'm the son of the god Apollo,” Gawain says. “I go barefoot because a prophetess who I loved more than I've ever loved anyone told me to. I don't suffer hunger or cold or pain. The spirits of earth and air and sea recognize me and let me pass unharmed. I went halfway around the world to fetch that ring because it was given to me. It's my inheritance. But do you know what, Rory? I don't want to be the son of a god. I don't want to be an oracle. I don't want my inheritance. I want to be an orphan. I want my old mum to pretend to be my mother like she did before. And I want Marina to be her father's child. I want her to be just a girl, like she used to be. I don't want to know anything about magic at all. No, that's not right. I want to keep remembering one thing about it, which is that I can't bear it. No one can. It's unbearable. They want it, Rory.” He points towards the bow and the approaching fire. “You know they do. You traveled with them, they spoke to you. You know where this wind is going to take us. You've got a little longer. Not much. And then they'll be here.”

Rory gapes. “What am I supposed to do?”

Gawain answers without urgency. He's not shouting, he's not cajoling. More than anything else he sounds like he's giving up.

“Whatever you want,” he says. “Even if you don't really know what you're doing.”

Rory's finally managed to get his hand into his pocket. It closes around the ring. He draws it out. They both look at it, amid the swaying and jerking and bumping around.

“No,” he says. “I don't get it. You'd better have it back.”

He's being stupid, he can tell. He forces himself to look at Gawain, expecting to see disappointment. Instead he encounters an expression very familiar to him from the women of Home: a sort of hopeless, worn-out patience and resignation. Gawain holds out his hand.

Rory's about to give it back to him when he remembers:

'Obbits!

“Hang on,” he says. “Wait a sec.”

The onrushing light no longer appears as a single distant glow. It flickers, dances, shoots out twists and arabesques of short-lived flame. Rory knows now what he'll see when it reaches them. He remembers the phantoms whirling around Per's staff. He remembers their wheedling, hissing voices.
We are friendless as yourself
. He remembers their hunger, the pressure of their desire.

He's remembering what the hobbits were supposed to do with the magic ring.

He drops to his stomach and worms across the pitching deck to the stern. Spray fizzes up and spatters his face and hands. He holds the ring out, thinks about stopping to think, doesn't. He drops it into the sea. There's an infinitesimal puncture in the crisscrossing veins of windblown froth, and it's gone.

He twists around to see if he's done the right thing. Gawain looks back, no smile, no frown. Rory holds up his empty hand to show what he's done, hoping for at least a nod. Nothing.

“I dropped it in,” he says, crawling back.

“OK.”

“Was that right?”

“It was lost for a long time,” Gawain says. “Maybe now it'll be lost for good.” He holds out a hand for Rory to shake. Rory takes it, feeling shy and rather silly. Gawain doesn't let go.

T
hey're still crouched together like that, free hands clasped, when the air becomes a blaze around them and they're wrapped in swarming ribbons of fire. Among the ribbons seethe faces with lidless pupil-less eyes, appearing and vanishing swift as spray. Their voices are whispers but together it's a roar. They seem to lift the boat and send it skimming, or perhaps that's just the effect of the forest fire wind. Rory and Gav huddle together, closing their eyes against the frenzy of motion. There's a smell fouling the ocean air. It gets stronger and stronger as their violent passage goes on: the smell of burning. The deck bruises them. Despite it all, Rory has a strangely reassuring feeling that he's done the right thing. He keeps thinking of what the women used to say, muttering to each other in the big room in the Abbey:
I
f only everything would go back to how it was before.