Weaveworld (56 page)

‘Oh my sweet …’ she said, her chest aching. ‘… sweet man …’

Again he strove for words, but his tongue cheated him. Only soft sounds came, which she could make no sense of.

She leaned closer to him. He no longer resisted her comforting, but took hold of her shoulder and drew himself closer still
to speak to her. This time she made a sense of the words, though they were scarcely more than sighs.

‘I’m not afraid,’ he said, expelling the last word on a breath that had no brother, but came against her cheek like a kiss.

Then his hand lost its strength, and slipped from her shoulder, his eyes closed, and he was gone from her.

A bitter thought came visiting: that his last words were as much a plea as a statement. Jerichau had been the only one she’d ever told about how at the warehouse the menstruum had stirred Cal from unconsciousness. Was that
I’m not afraid
his way of saying: leave me to death?; I wouldn’t thank you for resurrection?

Whatever he’d meant she’d never find out now.

She laid him gently on the earth. Once, he’d spoken words of love that had defied their condition, and become light. Were there others he knew, that defied Death, or was he already on his way to that region Mimi had left for, all contact with the world Suzanna still occupied broken?

It seemed so. Though she watched the body ‘til her eyes ached, it made no murmur. He had left it to the earth, and her with it.

XI

CAL, TRAVELLING NORTH

1

al’s journey North dragged on through the night, but he didn’t weary. Perhaps it was the fruit that kept his senses so pretematurally clear; either that or a new-found sense of purpose that pressed him forward. He kept his analytic faculties on hold, making decisions as to his route instinctively.

Was it the same sense the pigeons had possessed that he now navigated by? A dream-sense, beyond the reach of intellect or reason: a
homing?
That was how it felt. That he’d become a bird, orienting himself not by the stars (they were blotted by clouds), nor by the magnetic pole, but by the simple urge to go home; back to the orchard, where he’d stood in a ring of loving faces and spoken Mad Mooney’s verse.

As he drove he ransacked his head for other such fragments, so that he’d have something fresh to perform next time. Little rhymes came back from childhood, odd lines that he’d learned more for their music than their meaning.

‘Naked Heaven comes and goes
,
Spits out seas and dyes the rose
,
Puts on coats of wind and rain
And simply takes them off again.’

He was no more certain of what some were about now than he’d been as a child, but they came to his lips as if fresh-minted, secure in their rhythms and rhymes.

Some had a bitter sting:

‘The pestilence of families
Is not congenital disease
But feet that follow where the foot
That has proceeeded them was put.’

Others were fragments from poems which he’d either forgotten or never been taught in their entirety. One in particular kept coming back to him.

‘How I love the pie-bald horses!
Best of all, the pie-bald horses!’

That was the closing lines of something, he presumed, but of what he couldn’t remember.

There were plenty of other fragments. He recited the lines over and over as he drove, polishing his delivery, finding a new emphasis here, a fresh rhythm there.

There was no prompting from the back of his head; the poet was quite silent. Or was it that he and Mad Mooney were finally speaking with a single voice?

2

He crossed the border into Scotland about two-thirty in the morning and continued to drive North, the landscape becoming hillier and less populated as he drove. He was getting hungry, and his muscles were beginning to ache after so many hours of uninterrupted driving, but nothing short of Armageddon would have coaxed him to slow down or stop. With every mile he came nearer to Wonderland, in which a life too long delayed was waiting to be lived.

XII

RESOLUTION

1

uzanna sat beside Jerichau’s body for a long while, thinking, while trying all the time not to think. Down the hill the unweaving was still going on; the tide of the Fugue approaching her. But she couldn’t face the beauty of it, not at the moment. When the threads started to come within fifty yards of her she retreated, leaving Jerichau’s body where it lay.

Dawn was paling the clouds overhead. She decided to climb to higher ground so as to have an overview when day came. The higher she went the windier it became; a bitter wind, from the North. But it was worth the shivering, for the promontory she stood upon offered her a fine panorama, and as the day strengthened she realized just how cannily Shadwell had selected this valley. It was bounded on all sides by steep hills, whose slopes were bereft of any building, however humble. Indeed the only sign of human presence was the primitive track the convoy had followed to get here, which had most likely been used more in the last twenty-four hours than it had in its entire span hitherto.

It was on that road, as dawn brought colour to the hills, that she saw the car. It crept along the ridge of the hill a little way, then came to a halt. Its driver, minuscule from Suzanna’s vantage point, got out and surveyed the valley. It seemed the Fugue below was not visible to such a casual witness, for the driver got back into the car almost immediately as if realizing that he’d taken a wrong turning. He didn’t drive away however,
as she’d expected. Instead he took the vehicle off the track, parking it out of sight amongst the gorse bushes. Then he got out again and began to walk in her direction, following a zig-zag route along the boulder-strewn hillside.

And now she began to think she recognized him; began to hope that her eyes did not deceive her, and that it was indeed Cal who was making his way towards her.

Had he seen her? It seemed not, for he was now starting to descend. She ran a little way to close the gap between them, and then climbed onto a rock and waved her arms. Her signal went unnoticed for several seconds, until by chance he glanced her way. He stopped, cupping his hand over his eyes. Then he changed directions and began to bound back up the slope towards her, and yes! it
was
Cal. Even then she feared some self-deception, until the sound of his raw breath reached her ears, and the squeak of his heels on the dewy grass.

He covered the last few yards between them stumbling more than running, and suddenly he was a moment away and she was crossing to meet his open arms, hugging him to her.

And this time it was she who said, ‘I love you,’ and answered his smiles with kisses and kisses.

2

They exchanged the bones of their stories as quickly as they could, leaving the meat for less urgent times.

‘Shadwell doesn’t want to sell the Fugue any longer,’ said Suzanna. ‘He wants to possess it.’

‘And play the Prophet forever?’ said Cal.

‘I doubt that. He’ll drop the pretence once he’s in control.’

‘Then we have to prevent him
seizing
control,’ said Cal. ‘Unmask him.’

‘Or simply kill him,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Let’s not linger then,’ he said.

They stood up and looked down at the world that now occupied the length and breadth of the valley beneath them. The unweaving was still not completed; filaments of light crept
through the grass, spreading flora and fauna as they went.

Beyond the interface of Kingdom and Weaveworld the promised land gleamed. It was as if the Fugue had brought from sleep its own season, and that season was an everlasting spring.

There was a light in the shimmering trees, and in the fields, and rivers, that didn’t come from the sky overhead, which was sullen, but broke from every bud and droplet. Even the most ancient stone was remade today. Like the poems Cal had rehearsed as he’d driven. Old words, new magic.

‘It’s waiting for us,’ he said.

Together, they went down the hill.

Part Eight

The Return

‘You were about to tell me
something, child - but you
left off before you began.’

William Congreve
The Old Bachelor

I