Prospero's Children (17 page)

Somewhere far out to sea, maybe ten miles, maybe a million miles, a shooting star plummeted into the water, dissolving into a lake of glitter which broke into vast rings, spreading wider and wider, until at last they reached the shore as nothing more than ripples lapping on the sand. The unicorn quickened his pace once more, and Fern felt the wind of their speed ruffling her short hair, and she saw the flickering limbs below disappear into a blur, and the stars became streaks of light and the sand flew beneath them, and then the beach was gone and she was emerging from the mist onto the upland moor, and there was the scent of summer and a lark rising into an unclouded sky. She dismounted at the top of a slope and saw below her the familiar path down the hillside and the garden of Dale House. The position of the sun told her it must be late afternoon. When she looked round again there was only grass and heather: the unicorn had gone, and of the mist there was no sign.

VI

Will picked himself up after the motorbike had passed, listening to the rising howl of its engine as it mounted the slope, waiting for he knew not what—for the motor to cut, for his sister’s scream—feeling helpless and furious and afraid. We should have brought Lougarry, he thought, and he called her name, with little hope, hearing his voice hampered and deadened by the surrounding wall of mist. Then the note of the engine changed, faltering rather than stalling, but there was no cry, no sound from Fern, only the screech of sudden revs, and the altered pitch of a downhill progress. He’s coming back, Will concluded, looking in vain for a weapon, a stone to throw, a stick to thrust, anything to shift the rider off balance and bring the machine to a halt. And then there was Lougarry beside him, and he was sobbing with relief, but she did not heed him: she was crouched low with her ears flat against her skull, making her whole body lean and aerodynamic as a missile. The sound of the engine swelled to a great roar and the forewheel appeared out of the mist in midair, as the bike, propelled from a hump in the ground, leaped across the verge back to the road. At the same moment Lougarry sprang. She hit the rider while his machine was still airborne, knocking him sideways, out of the saddle, his booted feet catching at the chassis so that bike and rider crashed onto the road together, with the wolf on top. The wheels still spun, the engine shrieked in protest. Will ran round and switched off the ignition. The biker appeared to be sprawled on the tarmac; Lougarry’s bared fangs hung over him, her claws dug into his black leather chest. But the chest caved inward at the pressure and there was only leather beneath her feet, and the studded gauntlets shriveled into vacancy, and the helmet rolled away and rocked to and fro, to and fro on the empty road.

“What happened?” asked Will blankly, but Lougarry only stared in answer, and he could not read the thought behind her eyes as easily as his sister did. “Where’s Fern?”

Lougarry moved away from the discarded garments and began to trot up the hill, her muzzle lowered and swinging from side to side. Will followed. When they were some way up the slope the she-wolf stopped, exploring the ground in a circle as though seeking for a scent that was lost. This time, when she met his eyes, he understood. “Where did she go?” he said, questioning himself as much as his companion. “She can’t have just disappeared—can she?”

He called her for a while, wandering up and down, with Lougarry at his heels listening for any sound beyond the range of human hearing; but there was no response. Eventually, they went back to the road. The mist was clearing and a passing driver had stopped to examine the motorbike. “Looks nasty,” he said to Will. “Can’t think where t’ lad’s got to. Funny thing, him going off like that, leaving his gear and all. Happen he got a bad knock on t’ head. Did you see anything?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“We? Oh—you and t’ dog. Impressive-looking animal. Would that be some kind of Alsatian?”

“Sort of,” said Will.

At the man’s insistence, he helped haul the bike to the roadside—“Otherwise we’ll be having another accident”— though he was anxious to get home in case Fern should somehow have returned there. Then the driver went into Yarrowdale to report to the proper authorities and Will half walked, half ran up to Dale House.

But Fern had not come back.

Will spent the afternoon roaming fretfully from room to room, unable to settle to anything or to decide on a definite course of action. “Fern’s gone for a walk,” he told Mrs. Wicklow. “She vanted to be alerne.” Mrs. Wicklow seemed unworried, objecting solely on the grounds that she had made too much lunch—“But there, I daresay you can manage her share”—and had not provided the wanderer with sandwiches. She inquired in passing if they had found anything in Ned Capel’s old jacket; Will’s answer was carefully casual. “There was a key in the lining,” he said. “It could be the key to the study desk. We’ll try it sometime.” And, changing the subject: “Has Alison phoned? Or Dad?” But no one had rung.

Mrs. Wicklow left early for a shopping expedition to Whitby and Will, his usual appetite seriously impaired, ate only half his lunch and none of Fern’s. Lougarry polished off what remained. He did not know whether to take heart from the wolf’s demeanor: wild animals were always hungry, he reflected, and even if they felt anxiety it could not be allowed to detract from their first priority. When she had cleaned her dish she slipped through the kitchen door; Will ran after her in time to see her leaping the garden wall at a low point and speeding up the hill, an elusive streak of movement disappearing amongst the heather-tussocks. It was clear he was not meant to follow. He turned back into the house, feeling somehow deserted. He would almost have been grateful for the sight of Rollo and his henchmen; but the builders did not come at the weekend. Upstairs, he spent some while in profitless contemplation of the writing desk, an impregnable hunk of Victorian mahogany which looked solid enough to withstand assault and battery with ease. He fetched a species of skewer from the kitchen and tinkered with the lock, but desisted at last for fear of damaging it so the key would not turn. Then he went up to the top floor and stood outside Alison’s room, but the door was immovable, the handle gave him pins and needles, and anyway, he and Fern had learned all its secrets, or so he hoped. Back downstairs, he ventured cautiously into the drawing room. “You know something,” he accused the idol, “don’t you?” But the idol just sat there, silent as the stone of which it was made. “Jhavé,” he said, “Jezreel—” trying to remember the names Fern had mentioned, able to recall only those which resembled Javier. The stone did not stir. Will went out, shutting the door, and returned to the kitchen, where he sat down at the empty table, plunged in depression and doubt.

Fern found him there, when she came down the path from the moors, and through the garden to the back door.

“Where’ve you been?” he said, greeting her with a relief far removed from his customary fraternal nonchalance. “How did you get away?” Giving her no time to answer, he went on to pour out his own adventure. “Lougarry came—I called her and she came—she stopped the bike. She sprang and knocked it over, but when it hit the road the leathers sort of shrank and the helmet went flying and there was no one there, no one. And then we went looking for you in the fog but I think the scent ran out and Lougarry couldn’t follow, so we came back here. I’ve been waiting for hours.”

“Where’s Lougarry now?” Fern interrupted.

“She went out. I don’t know where.”

“She’s gone for Ragginbone. Mrs. Wicklow?”

“Shopping. And there’s no word from Alison.”

“Good. We must open the desk now, before anybody else shows up. When I find the key I’ll know what to do with it, but I don’t want other people trying to take it from me or influence me. Come on.”

Will ran after her up the stairs, thinking that although his sister had always been a decisive person this air of reckless determination was something new. It was as if she sensed instinctively that she had chosen the most perilous option, yet she was resolved to press on regardless, ignoring both instinct and common sense, evading any thought of danger. Will, never the prudent one, knew he must be prudent for her; but she was beyond restraint.

“What happened to you?” he reiterated as they reached the study.

“I met the windhorse,” she said. “The one in the picture. He looked more like a unicorn this time. He was faster than the bike.” She was not yet ready to talk about the silver beach at the edge of the stars.

“But you were gone so
long
.”

Fern was jiggling the key in the desk lock: haste made her clumsy and it wouldn’t slide right in. “What were you saying about the biker?”

“He fell on the road,” Will recapped, “and Lougarry was on top of him, but his clothes just disintegrated and there was nothing inside. The helmet rolled away—it looked horrible, as if his head had been cut off—but it was empty. I’ve been trying to work it out. D’you think he could have been another kind of receptor, like the idol—a puppet with no strings, controlled by somebody a long way off?”

“Maybe.” Fern sounded dissatisfied. “Not a receptor, though. The Old Spirits use receptors but I’m sure Alison can’t—and Alison was controlling this thing, whatever it was. I saw her talking to him—it—in the village. I don’t like the sound of it, but—” She broke off as the key clicked home, turning it both ways with an unsteady hand before the lock yielded at last. Then she unfolded the lid and saw the two sets of miniature drawers, even as Pegwillen had described, half-hidden behind a disorder of letters opened or ignored, used envelopes and dehydrated Biros. Fern removed an old ink-bottle and a packet of staples from on top of the right-hand set and took hold of the carved edge, pulling it toward her. It moved easily, sliding forward so the Capels could plainly see the hollow cavity behind the drawers. Will reached out and then drew back, conscious of his sister’s tension and the importance she attached to this moment. The light did not penetrate far into the slot; if there was anything inside it could not be seen. Fern explored it by feel; her fingers touched not the cold metal she had been hoping for but paper. For an instant her heart sank. Then she extracted a brown envelope, bulging and awkward with its contents. “Keys,” she said on a long sigh. Keys.

There was a big old-fashioned keyring with half a dozen keys, presumably to the various bedrooms and perhaps the chest in the attic. And one other, not made of metal, smaller than the rest and heavier, much heavier. Fern removed it from the ring and for a second it felt so heavy that the weight seemed to be dragging her down, toward the floor, through the floor, down and down into some deep core of gravity; then she closed her hand upon it and suddenly it was light again, a key like any other. “Let’s see,” said Will, and she showed him, strangely reluctant, as if the mere act of showing was a betrayal of a secret which she alone must keep. It was simple in design, almost crude, yet laden with ancientry, as though the great tides of ocean, the shadows of the treasure vault, the greedy, indifferent or cunning fingers which had handled it, even the cold touch of the mermaid long ago, had all left their sweat, their chill, their mystery, and their darkness encumbering it like barnacles, staining it with years beyond count. To Fern’s surprise it felt warm, like a sun-warmed pebble, and it seemed to take heat from her palm, so that presently she fancied its substance began to change, its opaque blandness thinned, and glints of brilliance came and went deep within the stone. This is a fragment of another universe, she told herself, the key to the Gate of Death; and a sudden awe came over her, so that she felt giddy from the hugeness and the power of this little thing, and she and Will and the room appeared to be spinning around it like leaves around the eye of the whirlwind. She looked up and saw the same awe and vertigo in her brother’s face, and his hand clutched hers or hers clutched his, until the study grew stable again and the aura of what she held had diminished.

“Do you suppose it affected Great-Cousin Ned like this?” Will wondered at last.

“Maybe it’s because we know what it is,” Fern suggested, “and it responds to our knowing.”

And we respond to whatever it knows, she thought, and the heat of the stone seemed no longer to be drawn out of her but flowing into her, starting with a tingle in her palm which penetrated skin and flesh until it reached her bloodstream and went coursing through her veins in a sudden fiery rush, threading its way through sinew and bone-marrow, so she felt illumined into transparency by the shock of its passage, suffocating from the glow in her chest. She visualized her heart pulsing like an incandescent ruby through the flimsy mantle of her body, even as she had seen Alison’s heart glowing in the mud-field of her dream. We respond, she thought; no, I respond.
I respond.
“Are you all right?” said Will. “You look a bit flushed, and your eyes are shining like a cat’s in the dark.”

“Here,” said Fern, thrusting the key into his hand. “You take it. I can’t—it does something to me.”

Will took it, slightly startled, apparently untroubled by its touch. He slid it into the pocket of his jeans and pulled his T-shirt over it for good measure. “What now?” he said.

I ought to know, Fern rebuked herself. I was so sure that when I found it I would know what to do . . .

And then, sudden and incongruous, the doorbell rang. It was no harsh electronic trill but a deep chime that resounded throughout the house: ding dong, ding dong. Everyone from the vicar to Lougarry always used the back door; only Alison would come in by the front, and she had Robin’s key. Anyway Fern, alert for the sound of her car on the drive, had heard nothing. Ding dong, it persisted, a summons of ruthless normality, insistent, commonplace. Threatening. Normality could not be ignored.

“I’ll go,” said Fern. “You clear up here. Shut the desk and lock it.”

“What do I do with the desk key?” Will demanded.

“Swallow it,” said his sister.

She ran downstairs and approached the front door with trepidation, nursing a slender hope that the visitor, obtaining no response, might already have been discouraged. But the bell rang again: ding dong, loud in the quiet hall. Conditioned by a lifetime of good manners, Fern opened the door.

“You,”
she said.

It was the Watcher. His hood was pushed back and his brindled hair stuck out in assorted wisps and tufts, like straw on a scarecrow. Lougarry was at his side. Standing on the doorstep he resembled more than ever a wandering tramp, vaguely disreputable, mildly insane, a shaggy man with his shaggy mongrel roaming the countryside in search of a free supper or a lost ideal. But the eyes in his thin leather face were bright and shrewd, green in the late sunshine.

“Why did you ring?” said Fern, taken off guard by the formality of his arrival. “Lougarry always comes to the back door. It’s usually open.”

“I cannot come in,” Ragginbone said, “unless you ask me.”

She opened her mouth to welcome him, and then shut it again. There was comprehension in his look. Between them, the threshold marked an invisible barrier, a boundary he could not cross uninvited. Protecting her.