The Dark Is Rising (15 page)

“I never saw you,” said James.

“You never looked, then.”

Mary prodded a finger forward at the first circle on Will's belt and rolled back with a howl. “It burned me!” she shrieked.

“Very probably,” said her mother. “Will and his belt have both been lying next to the fire. And you'll both be on top of it if you go on rolling about like that. Come on, now. Christmas Eve drink, Christmas Eve mince pie — Christmas Eve bed.”

Will scrambled gratefully to his feet. “I'll get my presents while the cocoa cools off.”

“So will I.” Mary followed him. On the stairs she said, “Those buckle things are pretty. Will you make me one for a brooch next term?”

“I might,” Will said, and he grinned to himself. Mary's curiosity was never much to worry about; it always led to the same place.

They pounded up to their respective bedrooms, and came down laden with packages to be added to the growing pile beneath the tree. Will had been trying hard not to look at this magical heap ever since they came in from carol-singing, but it was sorely difficult, especially since he could see one gigantic box labelled with a name that clearly began with a W. Who else began with W, after all . . .? He forced himself to ignore it, and resolutely piled his own armful in a space at the side of the tree.

“You're watching, James!” Mary shrilled, behind him.

“I am not,” said James. Then he said, because it was Christmas Eve, “Well, yes, I expect I was. Sorry.” And Mary was so taken aback that she deposited all her parcels in silence, unable to think of anything to say.

On Christmas night, Will always slept with James. Both twin beds were still in James's room from the time before Will had moved up to Stephen's attic. The only difference now was that James kept Will's old bed piled with op art cushions, and referred to it as “my chaise longue.” There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning.

While James was splashing in the bathroom, Will slipped off his belt, buckled it again round the three Signs, and put them under his pillow. It seemed prudent, even though he still knew without question that no one and nothing would trouble him or his home during this night. Tonight, perhaps for the last time, he was an ordinary boy again.

Strands of music and the soft rumble of voices drifted up from below. In solemn ritual, Will and James looped their Christmas stockings over their bedposts: precious, unbeautiful brown stockings of a thick, soft stuff, worn by their mother in some unimaginably distant time and misshapen now by years of service as Christmas hold-alls. When filled, they would become top-heavy, and could no longer hang; they would be discovered instead lying magnificent across the foot of the beds.

“Bet I know what Mum and Dad are giving you,” James said softly. “Bet it's a —”

“Don't you dare,” Will hissed, and his brother giggled and dived under the blankets.

“G'night, Will.”

“'Night. Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas.”

And it was the same as it always was, as he lay curled up happily in his snug wrappings, promising himself that he would stay awake, until, until . . .

. . . until he woke, in the dim morning room with a glimmer of light creeping round the dark square of the curtained window, and saw and heard nothing for an enchanted expectant space, because all his senses were concentrated on the weighty feel, over and around his blanketed feet, of strange bumps and corners and shapes that had not been there when he fell asleep. And it was Christmas Day.

When he knelt beside the Christmas tree and pulled off the gay paper wrapping from the giant box labelled “Will,” the first thing he discovered was that it was not a box at all, but a wooden crate. A Christmas choir warbled distant and joyful from the radio in the kitchen; it was the after-Christmas-stocking, before-breakfast gathering of the family, when each member opened just one of his “tree presents.” The rest of the bright pile would lie there until after dinner, happily tantalising.

Will, being the youngest, had the first turn. He had made a beeline for the box, partly because it was so impressively large and partly because he suspected it came from Stephen. He found that someone had taken the nails out of the wooden lid, so that he could open it easily.

“Robin pulled out the nails, and Bar and I put the paper on,” said Mary at his shoulder, all agog. “But we didn't look inside. Come on, Will, come on.”

He took off the lid. “It's full of dead leaves! Or reeds or something.”

“Palm leaves,” said his father, looking. “For packing, I suppose. Mind your fingers, they can have sharp edges.”

Will tugged out handfuls of the rustling fronds, until the first hard shape of something began to show. It was a thin strange curving shape, brown, smooth, like a branch; it seemed to be made of a hard kind of papier-mâché. It was an antler, like and yet not like the antler of a deer. Will paused suddenly. A strong and totally unexpected feeling had leapt out at him when he touched the antler. It was not a feeling he had ever had in the presence of the family before; it was
the mixture of excitement, security and delight that came over him whenever he was with one of the Old Ones.

He saw an envelope poking out of the packing beside the antler and opened it. That paper bore the neat letterhead of Stephen's ship.

Dear Will:

Happy birthday. Happy Christmas. I always swore never to combine the two, didn't I? And here I am doing it. Let me tell you why. I don't know whether you'll understand, specially after you see what the present is. But perhaps you will. You've always been a bit different from everybody else. I don't mean daft! Just different.

It was like this. I was in the oldest part of Kingston one day during carnival. Carnival in these islands is a very special time — great fun, with echoes going back a long, long way. Anyway I got mixed up in a procession, all laughing people and jingling steel bands and dancers in wild costumes, and I met an old man.

He was a very impressive old man, his skin very black and his hair very white, and he sort of appeared out of nowhere and took me by the arm and pulled me out of the dancing. I'd never seen him in my life before, anywhere, I'm sure of it. But he looked at me and he said, “You are Stephen Stanton, of Her Majesty's Navy. I have something for you. Not for you yourself, but for your youngest brother, the seventh son. You will send it to him as a present, for his birthday this year and his Christmas, combined in one. It will be a gift from you his brother, and he will know what to do with it in due course, although you will not.”

It was all so unexpected it really knocked me off balance. All I could say was, “But who are you? How do you know me?” And the old man just looked at me again with very dark, deep eyes that seemed to be looking through me into the day after tomorrow, and he said, “I would know you anywhere. You are Will Stanton's brother. There is a look that we old ones have. Our families have something of it too.”

And that was about it, Will. He didn't say another word. That last bit makes no sense, I know, but that was what he said. Then he just moved into the carnival procession and out again, and when he came out he was carrying — wearing, actually — the thing you will find in this box.

So here I am sending it to you. Just as I was told. It seems mad, and I can think of lots of things you'd have liked better. But there it is. There was something extraordinary about that old man, and I just somehow had to do what he told me.

Hope you like your crazy present, mate. I'll be thinking of you, both days.

Love,
Stephen.

Slowly Will folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. “A look that we old ones have . . .” So the circle stretched all the way round the world. But of course it did, there would be no point in it otherwise. He was glad to have Stephen part of the pattern; it was right, somehow.

“Oh, come
on
, Will!” Mary was hopping with curiosity, her dressing gown flapping. “Open it, open it!”

Will suddenly realised that his tradition-minded family had been standing, patiently immobile, waiting for five minutes while he read his letter. Using the lid of the crate as a tray, he hastily began hauling out more and more palm-leaf packing until finally the object inside was clear. He pulled it out, staggering as he took the weight, and everybody gasped.

It was a giant carnival head, brilliant and grotesque. The colours were bright and crude, the features boldly made and easily recognisable, all done in the same smooth, light substance like papier-mâché or a kind of grainless wood. And it was not the head of a man. Will had never seen anything like it before. The head from which the branching antlers sprang was shaped like the head of a stag, but the ears beside the horns were those of a dog or a wolf. And the face beneath the horns was a human face — but with the round featheredged eyes of a bird. There was a strong, straight human nose, a firm human mouth, set in a slight smile. There was not much else
that was purely human about the thing at all. The chin was bearded, but the beard so shaped that it might as easily have been the chin of a goat or deer as of a man. The face could have been frightening; when everyone had gasped, the sound Mary made and hastily muffled had been more like a small scream. But Will felt that its effect would depend on who was looking at it. The appearance was nothing. It was neither ugly nor beautiful, frightening nor funny. It was a thing made to call out deep responses from the mind. It was very much a thing of the Old Ones.

“My word!” his father said.

“That's a funny sort of present,” said James.

His mother said nothing.

Mary said nothing, but edged away a little.

“Reminds me of someone I know,” Robin said, grinning.

Paul said nothing.

Gwen said nothing.

Max said softly, “Look at those eyes!”

Barbara said, “But what's it
for
?”

Will ran his fingers over the strange great face. It took him only a moment to find what he was looking for; it was almost invisible unless you were expecting it, engraved on the forehead, between the horns. The imprint of a circle, quartered by a cross.

He said, “It's a West Indian carnival head. It's old. It's special. Stephen found it in Jamaica.”

James was beside him now, peering up inside the head. “There's a kind of wire framework that rests on your shoulders. And a slit where the mouth's just a bit open, I suppose you look out through that. Come on, Will, put it on.”

He heaved up the head from behind to slip it over Will's shoulders. But Will drew away, as some other part of his mind spoke silently to him. “Not now,” he said. “Somebody else open their present.”

And Mary forgot the head and her reaction to it, in the happy instant of finding that it was her turn for Christmas. She dived at the pile of presents by the tree, and the cheerful discoveries began again.

One present each; they had almost done, and it was almost time for breakfast, when the knocking came at the front door. Mrs Stanton had been about to reach for her own ritual parcel; her arm dropped to her side, and she looked up blankly.

“Who on earth can that be?”

They all stared at one another, and then at the door, as if it might speak. This was all wrong, like a phrase of music changing in mid-melody. Nobody ever came to the house at this hour on Christmas Day, it was not in the pattern.

“I wonder . . .” said Mr Stanton, with a faint surmise waking in his voice; and he pushed his feet more firmly into his slippers and got up to open the front door.

They heard the door open. His back filled the space and stopped them from seeing the visitor, but his voice rose in obvious pleasure. “My dear chap, how very good of you . . . come in, do come in. . . .” And as he turned back towards the living room he was holding a small package in one hand that had not been there before, clearly a product of the tall figure that now loomed in the doorway, following him in. Mr Stanton was beaming and glowing, busy with introductions, “Alice, love, this is Mr Mitothin . . . so kind, all this way on Christmas morning just to deliver . . . shouldn't have taken the . . . Mitothin, my son Max, my daughter Gwen . . . James, Barbara. . . .”

Will listened without attention to the grown-up politenesses; it was only at the voice of the stranger that he glanced up. There was something familiar in the deep, slightly nasal voice with a trace of accent, carefully repeating the names: “How do you do, Mrs Stanton. . . . Compliments of the season to you, Max, Gwen. . . .” And Will saw the outline of the face, and the longish red-brown hair, and he froze.

It was the Rider. This Mr Mitothin, his father's friend from goodness-knows-where, was the Black Rider from somewhere outside Time.

Will seized the nearest thing to his hand, a sweep of bright cloth that was Stephen's present from Jamaica to his sister Barbara, and pulled it quickly over the carnival head to mask it from view. As he turned again, the Rider raised his head to look further back into the room, and saw him. He stared at Will in open triumphant challenge, a small smile on his lips. Mr Stanton beckoned, flapping a hand, “Will, come here a minute — my youngest son, Mr —”

Will was instantly a furious Old One, so furious that he did not pause to think what he should do. He could feel every inch of himself, as if he had grown in his rage to three times his own height. He
stretched out his right hand with its fingers spread stiff towards his family, and saw them instantly caught into a stop in time, frozen out of all movement. Like waxworks they stood stiff and motionless round the room.

“How dare you come in here!” he shouted at the Rider. The two of them stood facing one another across the room, the only living and moving objects there: no human moved, the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece did not move, and though the flames of the fire flickered, they did not consume the logs that they burned.

“How dare you! At Christmas, on Christmas morning! Get out!” It was the first time in his life he had ever felt such rage, and it was not pleasant, but he was outraged that the Dark should have dared to interrupt this his most precious family ritual.

The Rider said softly, “Contain yourself.” In the Old Speech, his accent was suddenly much more marked. He smiled at Will without a flicker of change in his cold blue eyes. “I can cross your threshold, my friend, and pass your berried holly, because I have been invited. Your father, in good faith, asked me to enter the door. And he is the master of this house, and there is nothing you can do about that.”

“Yes, there is,” Will said. Staring at the Rider's confident smile, he focused all his powers in an effort to see into his mind, find what he intended to do there. But he came up sharp against a black wall of hostility, unbreakable. Will felt this should not be possible, and he was shaken. He groped angrily in his memory for the words of destruction with which in the last resort — but only the very last resort — an Old One might break the power of the Dark. And the Black Rider laughed.

“Oh no, Will Stanton,” he said easily. “That won't do. You cannot use weapons of that kind here, not unless you wish to blast your whole family out beyond Time.” He glanced pointedly at Mary, who stood unmoving next to him, her mouth half-open, caught out of life in the middle of saying something to her father.

“That would be a pity,” the Rider said. Then he looked back at Will, and the smile dropped from his face as if he had spat it away, and his eyes narrowed. “You young fool, do you think that for all your Gift of Gramarye you can control
me
? Keep your place. You are not one of the masters yet. You may do things as best you can
contrive, but the high powers are not for your mastering yet.
And nor am I
.”

“You are afraid of my masters,” Will said suddenly, not knowing quite what he meant, but knowing it was true.

The Rider's pale face flushed. He said softly, “The Dark is rising, Old One, and this time we do not propose that anything shall hinder its way. This is the time for our rising, and these next twelve months shall see us established at last. Tell your masters that. Tell them that nothing shall stop us. Tell them, all the Things of Power that they hope to possess we shall take from them, the grail and the harp and the Signs. We shall break your Circle before it can ever be joined.
And none shall stop the Dark from rising
!”

The last words keened out in a high shriek of triumph, and Will shivered. The Rider stared at him, his pale eyes glittering; then scornfully he spread out his hands towards the Stantons, and at once they started into life again and the bustle of Christmas was back, and there was nothing Will could do.

“ — that box for?” Mary said.