The House of Storms (50 page)

Was this the moment, she wondered, was this the place? She could have shouted out hello, but the creaking silence seemed oppressive, and who or what would answer her here, in Einfell? She moved across the slate hallway, which was dimly lit by filthy windows. A coat—a cloak of some kind—grey with mould but heavy and large, and with a hood as if its owner might once have sought to cover their identity, hung from a peg. She lifted it, almost thought of wearing it. But that would have seemed like some sort of trespass or theft. There was no doubt that people—or something resembling them—had lived in this place. Knives in the kitchen. Plates on the table. Rusty scissors. Food left in a pan. But whoever had been here had left, to judge by the coating of dust and fallen plaster, some years ago. Beyond another window in which a cleaner space had once been made, woods crawled into deeper shadows beyond the bank of a small stream.

Upstairs, there were more signs of habitation, and of sudden abandonment. Beds. Heaps of old, old newspapers which nevertheless, in the piling and folding, looked as if they had once been carefully read. What, in any case, had she been expecting? A child tended by monstrosities, or a monstrosity itself? She’d encountered the effects of over-exposure to aether since this war began—limbs turning to steel plate, new antlered shapes of bone peaking from bleeding flesh—but such patients were invariably dying, and always rare. The worst cases were shot long before they got close to a treatment tent, especially if their comrades thought they might survive. Or so it was said.

A last rise of the stairs, and she could hear the wind rattling the loose slates, and the cries of the other followers, and the crunch and crash of things being broken as more and more of Einfell was explored. An upper bedroom, lit by mullioned glass. A table and another bed. Scattered and piled magazines and newspapers. Something rolled from her foot, and she picked up an empty tin which had contained a sugar-free product called Sweetness, which she recalled had been briefly popular in the East before the war began. There was no sign of any toys. But there
was
a children’s book, which opened easily at the first page, and the word
dog.
Marion sat down on the bed. She raised the grey sheets to her face, but all she could smell was Einfell’s abandonment. This was the place; she was sure of it. But she was even more certain that Einfell and all of its inhabitants had long left, or more likely been taken for the War Effort, just as the war had taken everything.

Time passed. The house still stirred and creaked. Faintly, the wind still whispered and sang. Ridiculous though the thought would have been to the woman who was once Marion Price, it almost seemed as if the place was trying to comfort her. This, after all, wasn’t such a terrible life to have lived. Hadn’t she spent her own childhood sleeping on hay amid the smell of smoke and fish? She stood up and walked slowly down the stairs and out of the house, with its patch of somewhat newer slating looking comically out of place.

Despite all Einfell’s apparent neglect, the followers had discovered a cornucopia of pre-war supplies, mostly well preserved, inside one of its barns. Fires were being lit, and people were shouting, drinking, eating. They called and beckoned for Marion to join them, not because they knew or even cared who she was, but because here was a bounty to share after these shifterms of denial. She wandered on. A white building lay amid a spread of wintry pasture beyond a thinner arm of trees. It was a near-modern structure, and all the followers who weren’t ransacking the barn seemed to be seething around it. Office chairs and furniture were being tipped through broken windows for no better reason than the fun of it. Inside, there was an even greater bustle of destruction. Old paperwork spewed everywhere. Beyond a reception, and offices, in a kind of museum, followers were cheerily rattling manacles and oohing over old books and pictures of varieties of the changed. In another room, the wastage was of greater concern. For here, in beds and screens, was the skeleton of a decently equipped treatment room, and Marion’s nostrils twitched at the chemical scents which had been spilled recklessly from cupboards. Her instincts were roused. After all that she had and hadn’t found here today, she felt she had to do
something
.

Soon, she had sort of a roster going. Any potentially useful medicines were to be stacked in boxes and wadded with the papers from old files. To treat the many minor injuries—for, by definition, the followers were walking wounded—she doled out responsibilities amongst those willing to assist her. She shed her coat and rolled up her sleeves. She even took off her cap. But the occasional references to her as
Marion
were no more than any competent medic in this day and Age would have received. The real Marion Price, after all, would never elicit these screams as she dug thorns from people’s skin, and neither would she have looked so weary. But it was reassuring work; these were no longer people, but conditions, complaints, and there was picric acid for burns and hydrogen peroxide for cuts, and surgical spirit and iodine and the faint, hopeful glow of new stitching. By mid-afternoon, she had treated all of those who needed it, and anything of medical value had been carried outside to a wagon.

She found Ralph at the back of the building, sitting on an old office chair and staring into the greying trees.

‘There’s nothing here,’ she said, righting another chair beside him. ‘Nobody.’

‘You’re sure it’s true—what your sister told you, what you saw at that place in Bristol?’

She shivered. She really should have taken that cloak. But someone else would have found it by now anyway, and their need was probably greater than hers. That house with the patched roof would be being ransacked like all the others, and what, in any case, had she really found?

‘People get lost in wartime, Marion. You hardly need me to tell you that. But nothing’s lost for ever. Not yet. I still feel as if we’re going somewhere.’

‘Invercombe?’

‘Everything’s just as the Beetle Lady said. Einfell’s a staging post. What you did in there, helping those people, that’s all part of it as well, of why we’re here and what’s happening.’

She shrugged. Ralph looked and talked just like all the other followers; in fact, he was a lot worse than some. It was all stuff and nonsense. ‘No one recognises me as Marion Price.’

‘Isn’t that what you want?’

She took a breath. Suddenly, she felt angry. Angry with this place, and with this man, and all these ridiculous dreams and chants.

‘What I want is to know what
happened
to my son, Ralph! Is that so bloody much to ask?’

She left him and walked off towards the twilit trees. There were plays of brightness where the woods grew thinner. There were more signs of habitation as well. Trees strung with twirls of bark, odd arrangements of tin, fabric and kitchen-ware. A patch of earth paved with stepping stones of dinner plates. Everything was rotting and rusted, but frozen ribbons and bottletops tinkled like windchimes. Ice-adorned trees glinted like chandeliers.

Bang bang bang.

Shots and shouts rang ahead where the followers had gathered in a wider clearing. Marion watched them from the edge of the trees. Had something been found here? Someone? But no—there were just more odd conjunctions of everyday things. Flower-patterns of cog, trellis and piano key. An old fishing net strung with the rubber teats of babies’ bottles had been hooked between the trees, and a fire was being kindled from a loose wigwam of old timber, and other followers pranced and fired their guns as the Beetle Lady flapped her iridescent wings.

A small, squat brick building lay on the far side of the clearing. It was some kind of transmission house; Marion recognised the sigils of the Telegraphers Guild moulded into the bricks. She ducked through the broken doorway as the wildness of the chanting increased. The place was damp, but had been left surprisingly intact, and the telephone’s mirror gleamed, and there was even a chair. The firelight flowed through the doorway to play shiftingly across the reflected image of her face. Expression, glints of meaning, came and went from the mirror’s scummed surface with the pulse of the flames. How long had it been since she’d seen herself? Perhaps as far back as Noll’s flat; perhaps further still. Her hair was growing again, even if it stuck out in random hanks. She didn’t look anything like as bad as Ralph, but still…

Bang bang bang.

Ma-ri-on.

Outside, louder than ever, the chanting continued. The features of Marion Price, or some woman who resembled her, flickered redly. For all it was a relic of its kind, and plainly disconnected, this device still seemed to exert a kind of pull. But then, she’d never liked mirrors of even the simplest kind. What she’d seen, what she saw now, had never been the real Marion Price. Now, flakes of greater blackness seemed to be separating themselves from the mirror, and Marion wondered for a moment if the telephone was still live and making some random connection. But the blackness spread, and with it came a fluttering sound. Another moment, and it exploded about her in screeching waves.

Flailing, she stumbled outside amid black flurries of wings. Scraps of darkness swirled about her in the firelight, and followers were running, and screaming and rolling in unaccountable pain. Feeling something prickling at her shoulder, Marion saw a stubbed, ugly snout crawling towards her face. She dragged and batted it away. Shrieking, one wing loosely broken, it still attempted to cling to her until, finally, she stamped it dead. Blisters were already raising where the nocturne’s spittle had touched her skin.

The ravener, at last discovering some instinct to fight, howled and battered the air with its great claws, whilst the deserters drew back and began firing their guns.

‘Here! Look! Listen, listen … !’

Shoving a handful of branches into the flames then waving them over her head, the Beetle Lady circled, shouted, beckoned, and the nocturnes swarmed about her like billows of smoke. Some settled on her. Others flew away. But still she called to them as she twirled her sparking branches, and still she danced around the flames. It was horrible to watch as more and more of the wings spread over her. Then, stumbling backwards towards the fire, she was engulfed as the remaining nocturnes ascended in flame.

‘Get back! Give her space …’ Marion crouched over what was left of the Beetle Lady after she’d been dragged away from the fire. Smoke and sparks wormed over her clothes. Only one eye shone, for the other was a black pit, but somehow she smiled.

‘You’re
her
,’ the Beetle Lady whispered.

Marion tilted her head closer to be sure of what she’d heard. But the voice came louder.

‘You’re her—you’re Marion Price!’

Marion looked around. Almost all the followers who had reached Einfell seemingly stood watching in a wide circle around the spilling flames. Whispers and signs were made at the mention of her name.

‘I remember you now.’ Charred skin crinkled around Marion’s hand. ‘
Tell
me …’

Marion met the woman’s dimming gaze. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m Marion Price.’ A gathering murmur swept back through the crowd.

‘Ahh …’ Once more, and yet more impossibly, the Beetle Lady smiled. ‘I
knew
you’d come. Now …’ She breathed. ‘Now listen, listen, listen …’

Marion leaned closer, but the Beetle Lady said nothing more.

They buried the remains of the woman who had once been Doctress Foot in the same clearing in which she had died, beneath a rough cairn over which were laid objects which the followers had collected from around Einfell to commemorate her. Shortly after, the clouds darkened and it began to rain.

People might look strangely at Marion now, but didn’t question her commands as the wagons were stocked and piled and they moved off into the gathering downpour towards Einfell’s gates. After all, she was Marion Price, and she had come to the followers in their time of greatest need, just as the Beetle Lady had prophesied. Still, it was plain they resented this rain. And how far was it to this place called Invercombe? Marion would have guessed less than five miles, and she was unavoidably near the front of the procession now; she had no choice but to lead.
It’s her… Look, those hands. That face
… Dripping fingers reaching to touch. Eyes seeking and then avoiding her gaze. The ridiculous hope. Ma-ri-on. It was like the burns wards. It was like that ball in Bristol. It was everything she’d fled to escape. But, as the wild hedgerows dripped and the drums rattled and the voices chanted and rusted chains and signs of prohibition swung and creaked, it sometimes seemed to Marion as she trudged at the head of this steaming, shining procession that even the boom and hiss of the wind and the rain spoke the same three syllables of her name.

R
ALPH HAD WATCHED MARION
all morning. She was all the followers had left now that the Beetle Lady had died, and their numbers had swelled remarkably. Not that he was up to doing a precise job of counting, but even now, struggling across muddied fields pushing prams and dragging sacks laden with their possessions, more were arriving. A large enough group, certainly, to attract attention, but nothing like enough, for all its guns and drums, to do a satisfactory job of defending itself against the forces of the East or West.

Inky clouds roiled, growing, changing. It seemed as if they could walk for ever across this teeming landscape. Then suddenly ahead, shining local slate topknotted with wildly waving weeds, the walls and the gatehouse of Invercombe’s estate emerged from the rain. As if by huge hands, the gates had been unhinged and twisted aside. The followers hung back, for this, surely, was the place of which the Beetle Lady had spoken. A gateway into summer—the place beyond Einfell—beautiful beyond all describing—where the light of truth blazed. But the wind shrieked more loudly, and the followers moaned and cowered as hats and umbrellas wafted towards the churning sky.

‘It’s plainly ridiculous,’ Marion said, hunching over to Ralph as the crowds shivered and circled. ‘Shelter, at Invercombe! The place is dangerous. My father
died
from what happened there. There’s probably raw aether—’