The Time of the Ghost (27 page)

“And another thing,” Imogen said vehemently. More hairpins tinkled on the floor. “You find me, and we'll help. Move this hand when you've got me, and we'll all
will
me to hear you. Won't we?” she demanded, whirling round on the others in a sheet of hair.

“We can try,” Fenella said dubiously.

Monigan had taken from Audrey, and from Will Howard, and probably from Ned, too, things they had never expected to give. Now she knew that, Sally did not feel at all bad about cheating Monigan. She sauntered back seven years, pretending this was only a visit of curiosity. She was going, she let Monigan know, to see what happened to Howard and Ned when they were caught soaking wet trying to get back into School. Monigan let her go. It was not important. Sally waited until she had a glimpse of a master—it was not Himself—sarcastically watching the two boys drip on the floor of a corridor, and then she slipped away sideways, ten miles off and an hour or so back.

She almost went too far. She found herself in the ring of private gallops, under twittering larks, looking down into the bowl of the valley. There was Julian Addiman lying in the grass, and someone sitting some way from him who had to be herself. The rest were all standing up, looking slightly the wrong way. She could not find herself as a ghost there. She was lost among the unreal, shifting posts and the screaming and bleeding phantoms, which surrounded the thick, invisible presence of Monigan. At the moment when she looked, Fenella, shrill in her green sack, stepped forward and carefully put her hands to her head. She could feel Monigan avidly concentrating on what Fenella had to give. She slipped quickly back over the brow of the hill.

Oh, help!
she said. She had forgotten those barrows. There they humped, to her left, a crowd of small green hills, old and peaceful enough to living eyes. But she could see them shrouded in unseen shadow and full of flitting, half-faded scraps of denser shade. Half faded though they were, those shadows had sent that lark up to warn Monigan before. They had been Monigan's people. That was why they were buried so near to Monigan's Place. And if they saw her, they would send a lark up again.

But she had to go past. Imogen had run toward the wood. There seemed nothing for it but to get by as fast as she could. She gathered all her strength and fairly whizzed up the path. From her left, as she whizzed, she could hear the muttering of the old ghosts. It was a blurred mumble, like talk in the next room which you have not quite heard, of old things, old troubles, and arrangements for old crises that had gone by long ago. On her right, the three near-red horses in the field knew she was going past. They broke into a sudden gallop and went, with streaming tails and level backs, from one end of the field to the other. Terrified that this would make the old shadows notice, she went faster still, faster even than Julian Addiman's car, and hardly knew she was doing it. She only wanted to get by.

The mumbles faded, the wood flashed past, and she was beside the heap of bicycles. Imogen had not been there. Her bicycle was in the midst of the heap, with its chain trailing off on the grass. So where
was
Imogen? She wished she had asked in the hospital, but it had seemed, from the way Imogen talked, that it was muddled in her mind anyway. Perhaps she did not know where she went. The most likely place seemed to be the heaving, surging wood.

She drifted into the Back of Beyond. It was unexpectedly open inside. It was all tall young beech trees, rising like gray pillars to the green and tossing roof. Close by the end where she came in, the trees stood aside to make room for a long, sloping mound, overgrown with moss. The mound was not natural. She knew at once that this was another tomb—a different kind of barrow from another age—of someone very important. It was so hushed and cool in there, and the trees so like pillars, that the wood might have been a church built over the bones of an old king.

As she drifted past the barrow, a voice spoke out of it.
I wait here under the hill. Has the time come when I am needed?

I—I don't think so
, she said.

I hoped you had come to summon me
, said the voice.
You are both living and dead, as is fitting.

This alarmed her considerably.
I—I'm really not a messenger
, she said.
I'm looking for my sister Imogen. You—you haven't seen her by any chance, have you?

Imogen?
said the voice.
Long ago. Lost. Long gone.

Oh, no
, she said, hoping it was not a prophet lying there under the long mound.
My sister's alive. She has fair hair, and she's dressed in yellow.

There was a pause. The voice spoke somberly.
That one. Corn yellow and running, came past me just now, the one bearing within her the power to give life in the realms of death. I took her for the harbinger of my summoning. Am I needed among you now?

I—really don't think so
, she said.
Er—who are you? A king?

There was a longer pause. Then the voice said,
I have forgotten.

She knew how that felt. She was sorry for it.
I'm sure you will be needed in the end
, she said.
Tell me, do you know Monigan?

This time the pause was long and cold. Finally the voice said,
Leave me in peace.

She knew it would not speak to her again. It knew Monigan all right. Still, she thanked it politely. It had given her more hope than she had had since she woke up in hospital.
The power to give life in the realms of death
, she repeated, as she set off down the cool aisles of the church wood. It was so open in here that she would have seen Imogen at once had she been there. But Imogen was not in the wood.

Imogen was outside the wood at the other end, where a bank sloped down into a field. There was a mass of wild strawberry plants there. Imogen was squatting among them, having an eating orgy. It was a thing she did when she was not happy with herself. Her mouth, and her hands, and the front of her trouser suit were stained pale pink with strawberry juice. She was eating strawberries as fast as she could pick them. “Very exquisite flavor,” the ghost heard her saying as she came upon her.

The relief of finding her was so great that for a minute or so the ghost simply hovered, watching Imogen eat.

Then she remembered that she was supposed to do something when she had found her. It took her another minute to recall that she was supposed to raise one hand in the hospital so that the others could help in some way. She hovered there, trying to raise her hand. She tried mightily, but there seemed no way to do it. She did not seem to be in touch with her seven-year-distant body at all. For five frantic minutes she struggled to find some way to work those distant muscles, while Imogen ate strawberry after strawberry. Then it was too late. The tree beside her stood out green in a double blink of lightning. A moment later, thunder crashed.

Imogen dropped a handful of strawberries and sprang up under the first patter of rain. “Oh—oh!” she cried out. “I mustn't stay near trees in a thunderstorm!”

Lightning came again. Imogen heard it and screamed. Her scream was drowned in the thunder, but the ghost knew she was screaming because her mouth was open, pale in the lightning. Then she had almost vanished in a wall of rain. In the rain Imogen turned and ran, out into the field. The ghost almost lost her. She streaked after, and found her by the merest luck, running and floundering and trying to hold up her trouser legs in blind panic. The ghost kept up with her, in a panic quite as great. Where they went, neither of them knew. The rain drowned everything. The ghost did not dare do anything but keep Imogen in sight. She knew she could only move her hand in hospital by going back there, and that would mean losing Imogen. Imogen did not dare stop running. Once she tore through a hedge, screaming, “I mustn't stay here! It's wooden!” And then she ran again until her foot slipped on a wet slope and she rolled down it, wailing.

Foreign.
There was a dim mutter through the pelting of the rain.
Tell
…
beacon lit
…
No chance
…
negotiations
…
Warn—

Now the ghost knew where they were. The slope Imogen had rolled down was one of the round barrows. And its occupant had noticed they were there. Monigan was alerted. She had sensed trickery. The ghost, despite all her efforts to stay beside the crouching shape of Imogen, felt herself being pushed away. At the same time she found lying beside her a floppy, heavy thing, which seemed to be somebody's hand. She dropped it with a shudder.

Ned's voice said, “She's found you! Concentrate.”

She was lying in the hospital bed again, too dejected to tell them it was no good. And she seemed to be more firmly and definitely there than before. She could feel the weight of her hoist-up leg. The rest of her hurt quite badly.

Cart said, “I don't believe this!”

All four of them were staring at something on the other side of her bed. Sally turned her eyes that way. There was a blurred yellow shape there. It was a soaked and waiflike little girl in a yellow trouser suit. Phantom rain was lashing down around her, soaking her further, and she was staring at them all in evident terror.

The blurred lips moved. Sally heard what they said, but no one else did.
I shall look upon it as some fiendish futuristic experiment. I refuse to think I've gone mad.

Poor Imogen! she thought. It must be terrifying for her.

Fenella, with great presence of mind, dug her beautifully manicured hand into the grown-up Imogen's back. “Quick! Explain to her.”

Before the grown-up Imogen could do more than lean forward, ready to speak, the nice-looking nurse appeared in the doorway. “Five o'clock—” she began briskly. She looked at the blurred yellow apparition. She jumped slightly. Then she turned round and went out again, with the quiet, shut look on her face of someone pretending something has not happened.

“Get on, before she comes back!” said Cart.

“Imogen,” said the grown-up Imogen, “please believe this. I'm you. You grown up. You're seven years in the future. Do you understand? This is how you'll be then.”

The blurred blue eyes turned to look at her. The ghostly Imogen seemed to understand, but she did not seem to like what she saw.

“And this is Cart and Fenella and Ned Jenkins,” grown-up Imogen said hurriedly. The blurred eyes moved from face to face and seemed to recognize them. She's doing better than I did, Sally thought. “And this is Sally,” said Imogen. “Monigan's trying to take Sally.”

The blurred Imogen considered Sally. Her lips moved again.
It's not Sally. Her hair's wrong.

Fenella leaned over the grown-up Imogen. “I know what's the matter. It
is
Sally, honestly, Imo. Her hair went dark as she got older. Lots of people's hair does that. Do you believe me now?”

So that's why I thought I had dark hair! Sally thought. The blurred Imogen was nodding and looking carefully at her. She believed Fenella.

“You've got to stop Monigan,” the grown-up Imogen said. She was so anxious that she looked ill. “Only you can do it. You've got to go to Monigan
now
and give her something—you know what. Can you do that? For all our sakes.”

This seemed to strike the blurred Imogen as rather a good idea. A faint smile spread on her waiflike face. She nodded again, firmly and cheerfully. Everyone let out a long sigh of relief. And as their concentration went, the blurred shape of Imogen blurred further and dissolved away like paint in water.

Sally leaped to follow her. How she did it she did not know. She seemed stuck in her aching body like someone stuck in tight clothes. She struggled out of it frantically and managed to catch Imogen crouching between two barrows with her hands over her face.

“Oh, ghosts!” Imogen was saying.

There were ghosts but not the ones Imogen meant.
Raiding party
, said the old ghost in the mound.
Hostile band war-party
…
sentries report
—

Oh, be quiet!
Sally snapped at it.
We're not hostile. We come—come bearing gifts.

Merchants from the East
, muttered the ghost, and to Sally's relief, it went on to mumble about corn and jewelry as if it had forgotten them.

Imogen climbed to her feet, shivering. By this time the thunder was rolling back into the distance. The rain was slackening, but it had by no means stopped. Imogen's hair was gray with it and plastered to her head. Her yellow trouser suit was so wet that her body shone through it, in pink streaks. But she was looking very determined, in a frightened, hectic way. She pulled her sopping trouser legs from under her soaking shoes and plodded through the barrows to Monigan's valley. She knew the way. She must have been here with Cart when Cart first found it. Over the edge of the hill she plodded through the rain, under the chains and across the gallops.

As Imogen started going down into the gray, drizzling valley, Sally hung back, afraid that Monigan would notice she was here again, trying to cheat her. Monigan was watching Imogen coming. She was filling her valley, but not very strongly. The posts and the phantoms were faint behind the rain.

At that Sally understood a little how things like Monigan worked. For Monigan all times ran side by side, but there were times—like the time of the barrow people—which were in front of her, and other times, like this one, which were off at the edges of her attention. At these edges Monigan only sopped up all she could get. She did not give them her full attention. She had a greedy interest in what Imogen might give her, but she had not noticed that Imogen had been, for a few minutes, seven years in the future. The ghost of Sally did not bother Monigan at all. She thought there was nothing more Sally could do.