Seaward (20 page)

Cally sat listening to a bird calling unseen from the trees overhead:
chink-chink , chink-chink ,
clear and bright, as if it were trying to rival the splash of the waterfall. She said, “It's ages since we heard birds sing.”

Westerly was lying on his back in the sun with his eyes closed. He opened them a slit. “Want to know something weird?”

“Everything's weird.”

“Well. Yes. But I swear the sun's hardly moved since we were on top of that ridge.”

Cally looked up; then all around, at the long lush grass and full-leaved trees. Tall red spikes of flowers grew at the water's edge, and from a tangle of bushes nearby the heavy scent of honeysuckle drifted through the air.

“It's summer. A long summer day that just goes on and on.”

Westerly closed his eyes again. “I'd like to lie here for ever.”

Cally said slowly, “I suppose we could, too. That's just what she wanted.”

He sat up, frowning. “You think we're still in her country?”

“Where else could we be?”

“I don't know. I just felt we'd . . . left it behind. Up there.”

“I think it reaches all the way to the sea,” Cally said. “This is the same as the other part, really. It's like her two faces.”

Westerly looked at her. She sat hugging her knees, wearing the fine-woven white blouse and brown woollen skirt that had been in Ryan's pack. Her newly-washed hair was loose over her shoulders, glinting in the sun. He wanted to touch it.

Cally sensed his gaze; she felt a prickling down her spine, as she had earlier when she had watched him lying face down on the grass, brown-skinned, wearing nothing
but a frayed pair of jeans. She scrambled up and went to feel the clothes spread on the bushes. “They're dry.”

Westerly got reluctantly to his feet and stuffed his clothes into his pack as she handed them over. He said, “At least we can follow water to the sea again.”

From the green pool a stream ran quietly away through grasses and small trees, and the path that had led them down the mountain curved round and went on unbroken at the stream's side. They walked together through the sunshine, leaving the music of the waterfall behind, hearing only the lazy hum of insects and the bright chirruping of birds who seemed to follow as they went, darting overhead from tree to tree.

Westerly said abruptly, “You don't really
know
your parents are dead.”

They walked on in silence for a while. Then Cally said quietly, “Yes I do. I do now. It's not so terrible as you seeing your mother die, but it's the same.”

“But Taranis coming for them doesn't mean they. . . . Taranis isn't real. Nothing from this world is real.”

“You came into it through a real door,” Cally said. “I came into it through a real mirror.”

“Hum,” Westerly said. He pulled at a stem of grass as he walked, and chewed on it.

Cally said, “That's what you always say when you know something's right even though you wish it wasn't.”

“What?”

“ ‘Hum.' ”

Westerly smiled, but he said soberly, “I do wish it wasn't right.” He fell a few paces behind her as they passed a low-hanging tree, its branches stroking the stream. “Cally—if you know you won't find them, why are you still going to the sea?”

“Because Ryan gave me a message to take, and I promised,” Cally said. Then she added, very low, so that behind her back he could only just hear, “And because you're going.”

He caught up with her again and took her hand, and they went on along the path, beside the murmuring water, walking with their own thoughts, until ahead of them the sound of the water seemed to change, and grow. The sky was clear blue overhead, the sun still high; rounded green hills rose in the distance on either side of them as if they were travelling through a broad valley. Then they came out of the trees that fringed the path and saw that before them their small stream poured itself into a wide slow-moving brown river, and that the path too merged into a wide stone-paved road. Road and river stretched ahead, winding gently, masked by trees so that they could not see what lay on the horizon. But they could see that the road was filled with people, walking.

Cally and Westerly paused, wondering. There was
no sound but the song of the birds and the slow-speaking river; not one of the figures walking down the road spoke to any other, and their feet seemed to make no noise. But the broad highway was crammed with them, hundreds of them, thousands, walking, a long crowd flowing as if it too were a river. There were children, old men and women, people of every age and size and race. At the nearest edge, passing them, they saw in succession an old man wrinkled as a prune, wearing a turban and white robes, a woman with fair skin and yellow hair, a long-haired boy their own age in a nail-studded leather jacket, a tall black man in a business suit, a small Japanese girl jumping rope—all walking, together and yet separate, gazing ahead.

Westerly said tentatively to the man in the suit, “Sir—” But he walked by as if he had not heard; no one in all the endless moving throng gave a glance to the two of them, standing there amazed and watching. They walked by, silent and slow, and on all the faces there was the same expression: a dazed look of wondering discovery, happy and bemused.

The river murmured, the birds sang, and high overhead a small hawk hung in the air, motionless, hovering.

Westerly and Cally stood astonished, watching the broad river slowly flowing, the river of people moving silently along at its side. They could not see where the highway came from, or where it ended; it reached on into
the distance and all its length was filled with the endless polyglot crowd. The same instinct took both of them at the same moment, and they stepped forward onto the surface of the road and joined the walkers, keeping pace with them, hand in hand.

They never knew the time of the walking. Once they had joined the crowd, it seemed to them as if the road were itself moving forward, flowing as the river flowed, and they were caught up in a kind of quiet exhilaration, and saw on one another's faces the same look that was on all the faces all around. On through the green country they walked, among their silent companions, and gradually they began to feel a freshness in the lazy summer air, and to hear the sound of sea gulls crying, distant in the sky.

They saw that the river beside which they walked was growing broader, filling the valley, edged now with flat banks of sand on which small long-legged seabirds stalked, dipping their straight-beaked heads down to the shallows as Peth had bent his head to the flowers. The sand lay golden in the sun, the river now was blue as the sky. The voices of the gulls were louder, a plaintive curving calling, and they could see the white wings flocking, wheeling, further ahead.

Then they rounded a bend in the river, and looking down its course they saw open before them the flat blue horizon of the sea.

The road climbed; the bobbing heads of the crowd were rising, ahead. Forced to the edge of the valley by the broadening river, the highway was carved here into a ledge of the hillside, and as the crowd flowed along it, Cally and Westerly could see the sea and the great blue-gold estuary of the river set out below them like a promise.

On the road itself, grey roofs were rising now at either side: small stone houses lined the wide street. There was no sign of any occupants, but bright flowers were massed everywhere round their doors, blue and gold and red and white, fuchsias and hydrangeas and black-eyed Susans, roses and wallflowers, sweet-scented, golden-brown.

The gulls cried strong and loud; they heard the creak of boats at their moorings, the clash of metal, and voices calling; and ahead of them was the harbour.

It was huge. Hundreds of boats lay at anchor, or tied up at the long jetties. There were long sleek streamlined cruise-boats, there were tall-masted square-riggers; there were junks, dhows, dinghies, like a chart of all boats from all ages and all seas. But between the boats and the thronging crowd, an immense stone gateway stood.

The white stone gleamed dazzling in the sunlight, so that it was hard to tell how far the gateway reached; they could see only that it was divided by many entrances, and that each member of the moving crowd ended his or her long walking at one of these. They could not see what
happened beyond. They drew nearer, the white stone walls reaching high over their heads. At each entrance a man or woman stood, with one hand on a round white stone set in the wall. Cally looked puzzled at one face after another, all these greeting guardians. She saw a man with a dark pointed beard, another with shoulder-length hair and a gold circlet round his forehead; a woman with green eyes and a smile like sunlight, a twinkling man with a square white beard and grizzled hair: they all looked oddly familiar, and yet she could not remember having seen any of them before.

Every man or woman or child who approached one of the gateways spoke his or her name, and then the name of a country. The round stone flashed golden for a moment, and the guardian at the gate smiled in welcome and reached out both hands. And the arrival, dazed still but smiling, took the hands for a moment and then went in; through the gate of the harbour, towards the ships.

“Guy Leclerc, France.”

“Ramon Chavez, Guatemala.”

“John Ndala, Zimbabwe.”

“Danny Kelly, United States.”

“Wu Yi-ming, China.”

“Sarah Farr, England. . . .”

The gulls wheeled overhead, a salt breeze blew in from the sea. Cally and Westerly moved forward to the nearest
entrance, and a tall dark-eyed woman there smiled at them, beckoning. They went to her, and stood under the white stone arch. Cally began, “Calliope—”

The round stone flashed red, and suddenly over all the arching gateways and through the air of the harbour there was a furious jangling of alarm bells. Lights blazed, sirens wailed, and crashing down on all four sides of Cally and Westerly came four gleaming white walls. They slammed into place and stood solid and firm, enclosing them in a tight white square, a cell of stone.

T
he silence was sudden and total. Cally and Westerly could see nothing but the white walls. It was as if they had been wrenched out of life.

But as they stared at the enclosing room there was a blurring, a mistiness all around, and the walls seemed to retreat until the space in which they stood was far larger, far higher: a great hall walled with white mist. And the mist at one end of the hall glowed golden, and they saw a tall figure, cloaked in gold, walk out of it towards them.

Westerly leapt forward. “Lugan!”

Cally followed, in hope and relief edged with an odd feeling of shyness —but then she stopped. Out of the mist behind Lugan, gleaming cold as moonlight, came the Lady Taranis. Her light hair streamed loose over her blue robes.

Lugan was smiling at them. “Well done,” he said. “For enduring your journey, and now this last . . . astonishment. You are my folk indeed.”

Westerly said triumphantly, “I knew you weren't dead.”

“Why couldn't we go through the gateway?” Cally said. She was dazed, half her mind still held by the image of the silent walking crowd, and the ships waiting on the sea.

“Because you are in life, Calliope,” Taranis said. There was a warmth in her face and voice that caught at them in spite of their mistrust. “Because you and Westerly belong still to your own world, if you wish it. But those other travellers have left it behind.”

Lugan said, “The gateway is for them—not for you, not yet. And so the alarms rang when you tried to pass.” He looked at their uncomprehending faces. “Come,” he said abruptly. “We will show you the country, so that you may understand.”

As Cally and Westerly drew level with him he swung round, holding his cloak by its edge, flinging out both arms so that he seemed to enfold them and Taranis in two great golden wings. He drew them forward into the white mist that swirled where there had been a wall, and through the mist into brightness. And they were standing out under the blue sky on a grassy headland high above the sea, with the sweep of that limitless flat horizon before them, and at their backs the rolling green hills and plains inland. Below on the edge of the sea was the
bustling harbour; faintly they could hear the cries of the gulls, and see the glimmer of the broad white gate where the thronging travellers passed through to reach the ships. One tall-masted schooner was putting out to sea as they watched; they could see its sails take shape and fill as it drew away from the land.

Inland, they saw the shining course of the river, and beside it the broad highway filled with moving figures. But they could not see where the highway came from; it seemed simply to begin, somewhere in the misty hills, as if it burst from under the ground like a spring.

Taranis pointed down at the flowing crowds. “Those are the travellers from your world,” she said. “All those who were glad to be alive, but who in your terms are dead. They pass in their thousands every day, and the crowd never grows less. But not all choose the journey to the sea. Many are so weary, after a long life and a hard one, that when it is over they wish only to sleep. So sleep is what they are granted, and their spirits drift out in peace through the gentle darkness, and lie resting on the winds that blow between the bright stars, forever.”