Читать книгу Prospero’s Children - Jan Siegel - Страница 9

III

Fern got up early the following morning and returned to her own room. Instinct warned her that it would be preferable if Alison did not suspect they were on their guard. However, although it was barely seven she was no longer sleepy, and she dressed and went out into the garden, her footsteps leading her inevitably towards the back gate and the path up the hill. The sun had not yet risen far above the eastern horizon and the shadow of the house lay long and black across the grass, but the slope beyond glittered with dew. There was no sign of the Watcher; he seemed to have been gone so long she had almost ceased to believe in their meeting. As she climbed higher emptiness stretched in every direction. A few sheep grazed across the valley; cloud-shadows mottled the upland moors; a lone bird soared, its whistling call like the music of some unearthly piper, summoning errant spirits back to their hollow hills before the gates closed on the mortal day. The Day—the Day to Man! thought Fern, remembering her Kipling. The wind that touched her cheek felt totally clean and free, a wind that knew neither bonds nor boundaries, which might have blown straight from some virgin height, over grass and gorse, rock and river, to be breathed only by her. The skyline above was unbroken, except where she saw the twin tufts of a wild plant poking upwards like the cocked ears of a couched animal. Below, the valley opened out, a river-delved cleft in the rolling plateau, still cupping the last shades of retreating darkness, winding down towards the coast and the distant blue glimmer of the sea.

She was nearly at the brow of the hill when the animal rose up in front of her. One moment there was only turf and that telltale glimpse of ear-tufts, and then the grass shivered into fur and the creature was on its feet, pink tongue lolling between ragged teeth, amber eyes fixed unblinking on her face. It was a dog: it must be a dog. It had a pointed vulpine muzzle with a ruff around its neck not quite long enough for a mane and a lean body built for running. Its coat was matted and dew-draggled, white-streaked, grey-flecked, shaded with brown, stippled with black. It might have been part sheep-dog, part Alsatian, part vixen, part wolf. But Fern reminded herself that there had been no wolves in Britain since the Middle Ages. She knew immediately that it was female, though she could not have said how. Its unwavering stare was filled with latent meaning.

Hesitantly, half afraid for herself, half nervous of inducing fear, Fern held out her hand. The animal sniffed, then licked. The wicked incisors were less than an inch from her fingers, yet she felt curiously at ease. ‘Did he send you here?’ she asked softly. ‘Do you come from Ragginbone? Are you a Watcher too?’ And then, as an afterthought: ‘Are you on guard?’

The yellow eyes returned her questioning gaze with a steady intensity.

‘It was inside the house last night,’ Fern went on, progressing from the preliminary introduction to a tentative pat, then to stroking the thick ruff. The fur was damped into rats’ tails as if the dog—she was definitely a dog—had been outside a long time. ‘I don’t know what kind of creature it is: it moves like a hound, only it’s too big for any species of hound I know. Ragginbone recognised it. He said it couldn’t come in without being invited, but it did, and I think…I think Alison must have let it in. She arrived yesterday, and that’s the first time it’s been inside the house.’

The dog accepted Fern’s caresses with a quiver of uncertainty, a dignified restraint. Fern received the impression—she could not say how—that she was, not alarmed, but slightly unnerved, an aloof outcast unaccustomed to such demonstrations. This is ridiculous, Fern told herself. First I talk to a rock, now it’s a dog. ‘I don’t suppose you really understand,’ she said aloud. ‘There’s probably a natural explanation for everything that’s happened. My imagination’s running away with me. Only why now? That’s what’s so confusing. I’m too old for fairytales and anyhow, when I was a child I never let my fantasy take over. After my mother died, when I saw my father cry and I knew she was really gone, I was afraid all the time. I used to lie in bed at night seeing a demon in every shadow. I told myself over and over: there’s nothing there. There are no demons, no dragons, no witches, no elves, no Santa Claus. There are no vampires in Transylvania, no kingdoms in wardrobes, no lands behind the sun. A shadow is only a shadow. I made myself grow up, and put away childish things. I thought the adult world was a prosaic sort of place where everything was clear-cut, everything was tangible; but it isn’t, it isn’t. I don’t know who I am any more. I’m not sure about anyone. Who are you? Are you a dog? Are you a wolf?’ The yellow stare held her; a rough tongue rasped her palm.

‘Cancel that question,’ said Fern. ‘There are no wolves in England now. I have to go. Take care.’ A strange thing to say to a dog, but then, Fern reflected uncomfortably, the entire one-sided conversation was strange. She hurried down the path almost as if she were running away.

At the gate, she glanced round to find the dog at her heels. ‘You can’t come in,’ she said, wondering why the words disturbed her, tapping at something in the back of her mind. Her companion, undeterred, slipped through the gate behind her before she could close it. Reaching the back door, Fern turned with more determination. ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, but the dog stood a little way off, making no attempt to cross the threshold. Fern noted that she did not bark, or wag her tail, or do any of the things that dogs normally do. She simply stood there, waiting. ‘Would you like some water?’ Fern said, relenting. And: ‘Come on then.’ The animal slid past her in a movement too swift to follow, lying down beside the kitchen stove with her chin on her paws. And in the same instant something clicked in Fern’s head and she knew what she had done. For good or evil, she had invited the outcast in.

Later, when Fern had had her morning bath, she found the kitchen unoccupied and the back door ajar. The latch was old-fashioned, the kind that an intelligent animal might be able to lift with its nose. On the outside, however, there was an iron ring which required the grip of a hand. Fern, in a deviation from her usual policy, resolved to see that the door was left slightly open at all times.

It was a difficult day. Fern did not feel she could continue her search for the key with Alison in the vicinity, so she and Will escaped to the vicarage, where Maggie Dinsdale made them sandwiches and Gus drove them up onto the moors for a picnic. Back at Dale House, they found Alison in the barn with a measuring tape. She and Gus shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, thus disappointing Will, who confided in an aside to his sister that if she had been a witch she would surely not have been so friendly with a vicar. ‘Don’t be idiotic,’ Fern responded. ‘Next you’ll expect her to wear a pointed hat.’

Supper was happily brief: Alison retired straight afterwards claiming she wanted to work on her picture. Will, going up to her room later with the excuse of an offer of coffee, reported that she had brought her own television. That settles it, ‘he concluded.’ I don’t like her. Why can’t she share it with us? That isn’t just selfishness, it’s…it’s sadism. We must have a TV. Speak to Daddy about it.’

‘Mm.’

‘Do you know, when I opened the door she switched it off, as if she couldn’t bear me to see it even for a couple of minutes? I think she’s got a video too. I wish we had a video.’

‘Maybe she was watching something she considered unsuitable for little boys,’ Fern suggested unkindly.

They fell back on Mah Jongg and a plate of Mrs Wicklow’s biscuits, becoming so engrossed that it was almost midnight when Fern glanced at the clock. ‘Are you going to sleep in my room again?’ Will asked, not looking at his sister, his voice carefully devoid of any wistfulness.

‘I don’t think it’s necessary,’ Fern said. ‘Put something against your door, though—something heavy. You can bang on the wall if you really need me. I feel it’s important to…well, act nonchalant. As if we haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Then either she’ll think we’re unobservant, which means she’ll be underestimating us, or she’ll be as baffled as we are. She’s behaving as if there’s nothing going on; so can we.’

‘Do you suppose Mrs Wicklow was right,’ Will said abruptly, ‘when she said she’d seen Alison before?’

‘Yes,’ said Fern. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Can you put a short wig over long hair?’

‘I think so. Actresses do it sometimes. I’m sure they do.’

This ought to be very exciting, ‘Will remarked.’ I just wish I wasn’t scared. Are you scared?’

‘Shitless,’ said Fern coolly, going over to the back door. The vulgarism was unusual for her and Will grinned.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Leaving the door open.’

‘What? If that creature comes—’

‘Our prowling visitor,’ she pointed out, ‘can already get in: we know that. I want to be sure—’ She hesitated, changed her tack. ‘I’m like Mrs Wicklow. I want to let in the air.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘And don’t use that kind of language.’

‘But you said—’

‘I’m sixteen,’ said Fern haughtily. ‘I’m allowed.’

They went upstairs still squabbling, falling silent, by mutual consent, at the foot of the second flight. Fern mounted a few steps, but there was no sound from Alison’s room. The low wattage lighting favoured by Great-Cousin Ned did not reach far, and the upper landing was swathed in shadow. She could see Alison’s door but it was firmly closed and she hoped the sense of oppression which seemed to emanate from it was the result of pure fancy and overstrained nerves. She stole quietly back to her brother and the two of them went to their respective beds.

For all his apprehension, Will fell asleep quickly; but Fern sat up, reading by torchlight so no betraying gleam could be seen under the door, her senses on alert, half fearful, half in a sort of desperate expectancy. More than an hour passed while she tried in vain to concentrate on the story, unable to restrain herself from regular glances at her travelling clock: the luminous hands seemed to snail around the dial, spinning out the minutes, dragging her down into slumber. A brief shower battered on the window, until a rush of wind swept it away. When the snuffling finally started, she had almost given up. Her body jerked upright on a reflex, snatching her cheek from the pillow; her breath was caught in her throat; her eyes dilated, though there was nothing to be seen. She switched off the torch and retrieved the book, which was slipping floorwards. In the corridor outside she heard the sniffing moving closer, hesitating at Will’s door, progressing on to hers. There was the familiar ragged panting, the not-quite-noiseless footfalls, the sudden scrabble of claws on wood. And then silence. A new silence, invading the passageway, tangible as a presence. The snuffling and the clawing had ceased, the panting changed into a low snarl, a soft, dark noise on the edge of hearing, rising slowly to a growl, a sound neither feline nor canine but somewhere in between. Fern thought she had never in her life heard anything so totally evil. Then came a sudden rush, the skidding of paws on bare board, the swish of bunching drugget, a clamour of snapping, worrying, grumbling, an ugly yowl. Heavy bodies seemed to be struggling and writhing; a crash told of an overturned table, a shattered vase. Yet throughout Fern was convinced it was the intruder who made most of the noise: the challenger was mute, with no voice to cry defiance or pain. She heard a scurrying as of something bent on escape: one set of paws fled towards the stairs, chasing or being chased, and then quiet supervened. Out in the garden there was a howl of baffled rage, maybe of fear; but it died away, and only the wind returned, droning among the chimneys, and under the eaves. Fern had grown used to the wind; they had become friends. She lay down, smiling faintly, heedless of the damage she envisaged outside her door. A name came into her mind, clear and certain as a call: Lougarry.

She fell asleep.

At breakfast, Alison was irritable. ‘Nightmares,’ she said. ‘I thought I could hear voices crying, shrieks, moans. I expect it was the wind.’ Will looked innocent, Fern bland. She had risen early to dispose of the broken vase; it was one Robin had said might be valuable; but then, his daughter reflected, he always said that. A rapid confabulation had revealed that Will, too, had witnessed the fight in the night.

‘I slept well.’ Fern asseverated sweetly.

Will merely smiled, and attacked his Frosties.

A little to their surprise, Alison chose to go for a walk later, declining company even before they had had an opportunity not to offer it. Afterwards the back door, unlatched, swung open; the dog was waiting outside. ‘Come in,’ Fern said. ‘You don’t have to wait for permission. You’re always welcome.’ She came in, hobbling on three legs: there was blood on the fourth, dried into brownish crystals, and more blood clogging the thick fur of her ruff. She lay down at Fern’s feet and fixed her with that steady unhuman gaze.

That’s a wolf, ‘said Will.’ I know it is. Where did you find it?’

‘She found me. Get some antiseptic; I’ve seen a bottle of Dettol somewhere. She’s hurt.’

‘It was her,’ Will said, ‘last night—wasn’t it?’

‘Fetch the Dettol.’

The animal was docile while Fern cleaned her wounds and applied cream from a tube of Savlon, crusted from long disuse, which was all they could find. The tears in her shoulder were deep and ugly but her expression appeared indifferent, beyond suffering. ‘Lougarry,’ Fern murmured. The tired muzzle lifted; the ears pricked.

‘Thank you,’ said Will.

Robin phoned that evening: Alison spoke to him at length and hovered when Fern took over, making confidences impossible. Of course we’re selling, ‘he reiterated a little too forcefully.’ Leave it to Alison. Bright girl. Knows what she’s doing. Gave me the name of a useful chap over here—professor of witchcraft—they have professorships for everything in America. What’s that, darling? Can’t hear you.’

The line shouldn’t be this bad, thought Fern, giving up. We live in an age of satellite technology. Supposing it isn’t the phone…

Alison left on Monday, promising to return by the end of the week. ‘She may be involved in this business,’ Will said, ‘but I don’t believe she’s the real enemy. She’s not…she’s not frightening enough.’

‘What do you want?’ asked Fern. ‘The Devil in person? Yesterday you complained you were scared; today you’re complaining you’re not scared enough. That isn’t logical.’

‘I’m still scared,’ Will explained, ‘but not of Alison. She’s all slippery charm: you think you’ve caught her out—you think you can pin her down—but her personality just slithers away from you as if it were greased. Mrs Wicklow says she saw her before, but she isn’t absolutely sure. She must have come here after something, but she hasn’t tried to search the house. We think she’s controlling that creature that sniffs in the night, but we don’t know. We can’t prove anything.’

‘I thought you believed in the impossible,’ said Fern. ‘Now you want proof.’ She was anointing Lougarry’s injuries as she spoke: once Alison had gone, the dog had come into the kitchen and lain down in the place beside the stove which she had taken for her own.

‘Not exactly. I want to know what we’re up against.’ Will cupped his chin in his hand, gazing dreamily into the middle distance. ‘What’s really going on? Sometimes I feel we’re tangled in a dark web of supernatural forces, but if you try to snatch at a single strand it frays into a shadow and then there’s nothing there. What the hell are we all looking for, anyway?’

‘Actually,’ Fern began, finally resolved to tell him about the key—but Mrs Wicklow came in, cutting her short, and the impulse to confide passed.

Inevitably, the housekeeper objected to Lougarry. ‘Great-Cousin Ned had a dog,’ Fern reminded her. ‘You told us so.’

‘That’s not a dog,’ said Mrs Wicklow. ‘Looks more like a wolf. It’s probably savage, anyway. If it’s been killing sheep there’ll be real trouble, police and that. I’d better go call someone to fetch it away.’

‘Have any sheep been killed?’ Fern challenged, unobtrusively crossing her fingers. She had a feeling that taking mutton on the hoof would be well within Lougarry’s scope.

Mrs Wicklow conceded grudgingly that they hadn’t. ‘Been fighting, though, by the look of it,’ she said. ‘Those cuts look nasty. You want to take it to t’ vet: he’ll see to it. I daresay t’ reverend would give you a lift.’

Lougarry’s lip lifted in a soundless snarl.

‘I don’t think she’d like that,’ Fern said.

‘What’ll you do about feeding it? Haven’t thought about that, have you? You can’t just give it Madam Slimline’s leftovers.’

A picture of rabbits came into Fern’s head—rabbits scattering in a panic, scuts flashing white. ‘We’ll fix up something,’ she said evasively. ‘Anyhow, she doesn’t belong to us. She comes round sometimes: that’s all.’

‘Scrounging,’ said Mrs Wicklow, hunching a disapproving shoulder.

A knock on the back door heralded the arrival of Gus Dinsdale, further complicating the argument. ‘If she’s a stray,’ he said, ‘you ought to hand her over to the authorities.’

‘She’s not a stray,’ Fern snapped, feeling beleaguered. ‘She belongs to this old man: I don’t know his name but I’ve seen him round here quite a lot. I think he’s a kind of tramp.’ Will glanced quickly at her, his eyebrows flicking into a frown.

‘I know the one you mean,’ Gus said unexpectedly. ‘Interesting type. Seems to be out in all weathers and there are more lines on his face than a street map, but I’ve seen him striding over the moor at a pace that puts most hikers to shame. We’ve exchanged a few words now and then; he’s intelligent and cultured, certainly not a drunk. I would guess he’s one of those who choose a life on the road—they feel hemmed in by the walls of civilisation, trapped in the kind of surroundings we would call home. A free spirit. I never realised he had a dog. I must say, this creature appears to be an appropriate companion. She looks more than half wild. A free spirit herself, no doubt.’

‘It’s wild all right,’ said Mrs Wicklow, still refusing to allow the visitor the dignity of gender. ‘If Fern touches t’ cuts it’ll bite her for sure.’

(‘Who’s the old man?’ Will inquired, for his sister’s private ear; but she shook her head.)

‘The dog seems to trust her,’ Gus was saying, evidently won over by his own image of the free-spirited wanderer and his maverick pet. ‘Animals can very often sense when they’ve found a friend. After all, you’ve heard the story of Androcles and the lion, haven’t you?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Mrs Wicklow retorted, scoring points where she could.

But Gus had turned back to Fern. ‘Does she have a name?’ he asked.

‘Lougarry,’ said Fern. She didn’t say how she knew.

‘Odd,’ the vicar mused. ‘I wonder…it sounds almost as if it might come from the French. Lougarry…loup garou.’

‘Loup garou,’ Will repeated, struggling with his accent. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Werewolf,’ said Gus.

It was after lunch and Lougarry had departed on affairs of her own before the Capels were left to themselves. ‘It’s time we had a serious discussion,’ said Will. ‘There are too many things you’re not telling me. The old man, for instance. And Lougarry. Do you think she really is a werewolf?’

‘Maybe,’ said Fern. ‘She’s on our side: that’s all that matters. We’re rather short of allies.’

‘And the old man?’

‘He watches. I told you. He has a tendency to look like a rock. I thought I might have imagined him, but Gus has seen him too, so he must be real. Perhaps it was the rock I imagined.’

‘Gus is a vicar,’ Will remarked captiously. ‘He’s supposed to see things. Angels, you know, and visitations.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Fern. ‘He’s C of E.’

There was a pause; then she got to her feet. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’d better get on with it.’

‘Get on with what?’ asked Will, but he knew.

They went upstairs to Alison’s room. The landing was grey and dim, surrounded by closed doors; no sunlight penetrated the narrow window in the north wall. Will took hold of the handle and tried to turn it, but it would not move. It seemed to be not so much jammed as fixed, petrified into stasis: it didn’t even rattle. He pulled his hand away, complaining of pins and needles. ‘It can’t be locked,’ said Fern. ‘There’s no key.’ She seized the knob herself, but her grip squeaked on brass; Will kicked and shoved at panels that did not stir. When she drew back she could see the pins and needles, angry pinpoints of red flickering and fading on her palm. ‘This won’t do,’ she said. ‘This is our house. We have a right to enter any room we please. She can ask us to stay out if she likes, but she can’t force us. I don’t know what she’s done, but we’re going to get in.’

‘The window?’ Will suggested.

From a neighbouring room they leaned out to check, but Alison’s window also appeared shut. ‘We might be able to open it,’ Will said, ‘if she hasn’t done anything fancy to it like she has to the door.’ He didn’t mention the word magic but they both knew the omission was not born of modern scepticism. ‘This window’s on a latch; hers probably is too. You could lift it from the outside with something thin enough to slip through the crack. I’ve seen it done on TV with a credit card.’

‘I don’t have a credit card,’ said Fern. ‘We’ll try a knife. But first, we’re going to need a ladder.’

Knowing Mrs Wicklow’s antipathy to Alison, Fern did not hesitate to enlist her aid. The housekeeper had reservations, not about the propriety of their actions, but about the risks of illicit entry via a window more than twenty feet off the ground. Ladders, she claimed, were notoriously chancy, especially under inexpert control. However, suspicion of the alien finally persuaded her. ‘I don’t know what she’s done to t’ door,’ she said. ‘Fair made my hand sting. It must be some kind of electricity.’

Introduced to a small-time builder in the village, Fern and Will were able to borrow a ladder long enough for their needs on the following Wednesday afternoon. As instigator of the plan Will climbed up first, armed with the slimmest of the kitchen knives; his sister waited at the bottom, holding the ladder to steady it. Rather to her surprise, the methods of television drama did not let them down.

‘Done it,’ Will called out, and she saw him disappearing over the window-sill. She wriggled the two prongs deeper into the flower-bed and ascended a little nervously after him.

The room was transformed. The balding velvet of cushion and curtain now appeared thick and soft, the dingy carpet glowed with the tracery of long-lost designs. Shelves formerly empty were stacked with books and cassettes, a portable music centre, a pair of candles in iron holders, a pot-plant which resembled a cactus, its spines glistening, its single flower gaping like a small red mouth with the tongue-shaped stamen lurking inside. Fern glanced at the books: they seemed mainly concerned with art and antiquities, though there were a couple in a language, and a script, which she could not understand. Several new pictures adorned the walls, one of which looked vaguely familiar: it took her a few moments to recognise the etching she had once seen at the gallery. The imprisoned horse was not on show but in the far corner stood an easel shrouded in a piece of stained cloth. There was a different cover on the bed, all emerald and peacock-blue, embroidered with twining feathers and iridescent eyes: it was very beautiful but somehow it repelled her. She could imagine it stitched in pain by women with blistered fingers and vision weakened from peering at their labour. She caught its reflection in the spotless mirror, turned away; and then her gaze was drawn back to the glass. The image showed her a bedroom within a bedroom, the alien invasion of Alison’s possessions, the books, the paintings, the plant. But the sumptuous curtains were threadbare as before, the carpet dim with age, murky with ingrained dirt. ‘Will…’ Fern whispered, suddenly pale, struggling with the evidence of her senses.

But her brother was concentrating on the television. He had wheeled the unit away from its place against the wall and was toying with the remote control, obtaining nothing but crackle and snow. He had not noticed the mirror, and Fern found that she shrank from drawing his attention to it, more than half afraid he would not see what she saw. She forced herself to look elsewhere, her glance alighting on a box at the bedside, a rectangle of some dark wood, its sombre hue veined as if with faint gold, the lid inlaid with ominous characters in red enamel. When she touched it a scent came to her, as if carried on a nonexistent breeze in a room with barely a draught: the smell of a northern forest, of sap rising, leaves opening, roots drinking, as if the wood still lived, dreaming of the days when it was a tree among trees. She felt round the rim of the lid, encountered the metal clasp which closed it, and bit back the beginnings of a scream. The stab of pain was like a burn, though her hand was unmarked. ‘What is it?’ Will inquired, distracted from the television screen.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Fern. ‘It felt like the door handle, only worse. I need gloves.’

The gloves were in a drawer under the bedside table. Fern noted with disapproval that they were made from the skin of a reptile, snake or lizard; the mottled patterns appeared to alter in a changing light, as if, like the wood, some elusive memory of life lingered in the dead scales, shifting colours like a chameleon. She pulled on the righthand one: it had looked overlarge but the fingers seemed to shrink onto hers, skin melding with skin, until it no longer resembled a glove and she knew a sudden terror that it would never come off. Her arm would terminate for all time in a claw. ‘Can you open it now?’ Will demanded. She pressed the clasp without ill effect; the lid lifted of its own accord. Inside, the box was divided into sections. There were tiny jars and bottles with labels too minute to decipher; a squat book, leatherbound and handwritten, its pages sere with age; strangest of all, an unmarked video cassette, the tape invisible in its opaque casing. ‘Let’s try it,’ said Will, his expression bright with a mixture of curiosity and daring; but he could not pick it up. Fern took it in her gloved hand and inserted it in the machine, then they sat on the peacock bed-cover to watch. Will pressed play. There was a click, and the screen disappeared. The square outline of the TV set framed a hole, bottomless as the Pit, a window into nothing. A solitary star, infinitely remote, no bigger than a grain of dust, winked and died in its depths. ‘They do it with computers,’ Will said. He did not sound convinced.

The image came rushing up towards them from the point where the star had died, spinning to a halt, shuddering into coherence. This was no two-dimensional film but a spyhole on reality, a street with exhaust fumes and erratic sunshine, an old man getting into an old car. He tugged a bunch of keys out of his pocket, glanced at it in irritation, and put it back, subsequently producing a much smaller bunch which evidently included the key to the ignition. It came to Fern that this must be Great-Cousin Ned, and on that first keyring was the one key they sought. But the image was gone; another crowded on its heels, and another, a quickfire succession of instant and incident, fragments of history tumbling over each other, hurtling back further and further into the past. A market stall with a tray of trinkets where sifting fingers brushed over an object she could not see; a coved cellar piled with cases on which the dust lay undisturbed; a uniformed figure picking up something from a blood-smeared floor; two men staring into a flame, their faces lit from below, one chubby and eager, the other very young but already shrewd, his forelock limp with sweat, premature lines in his thin cheek. For a second, his eyes lifted, and they were brown and golden and green as a sunlit wood. Then the chimera was lost, overwhelmed in a chaos of other faces: a gipsy, a woman with languorous eyes, a man with a bitter mouth. A waveless sea trailed at the stern of a seedy fishing boat, the sails hanging immobile in the torpid air. The setting sun spilled from beneath the cloud-shelf and flashed like fire across the ocean, igniting a path of gold where a dark silhouette rose to a fatal rendezvous. And then the water closed over all, and far below a skull blossomed, growing slowly into flesh and form, but before Fern could see any clear features white hands covered it, and it was gone. At the last there came another boat, a struggling vessel with bent mast and splitting timbers, riding on a storm beyond imagining. The tempest shook the television set as if it were made of card; a gust of wind tore round the room, wrenching at the curtains, snapping the window wide. Lightning crackled in the gap where the screen used to be. Fern and Will felt themselves lifted up, they and the house and the hillside without, as if the dimension in which they dwelt had turned into a giant elevator, and the only fixed universe was inside the television. They clung to the bedposts like children on a Ferris wheel, soaring through the tumult of sky and sea, until they could see the many-coloured flares pulsing like a phantom coronet above the roof of the clouds, and hear the thunder-drums rolling down below. And then a hole was ripped in the canopy and a chasm opened amidst the waves, and there was the ship plunging into it, and the helmsman was swept away, and Fern knew the glimmer at his throat was the missing key, and she saw the pale arms of the mermaid dragging him to his death. A swift darkness spread across the vision, blotting out even the storm, and a voice boomed out of it as cold and empty as the deeps of space. ‘It is forbidden to go further back,’ it said. ‘The city has been banished from Timer and Forever, history and memory. No man shall look on Atlantis again.’ There was a snick like the closing of a door, and the screen was back in place. The room around them was stationary; house and hillside did not stir. Fern was trembling so violently she did not trust herself to speak.

‘My G-God,’ stammered Will. ‘My God.’ And: ‘What was that? What did it all mean?’

‘It means we’re in trouble,’ Fern said briefly, when she was sure she could keep the quiver out of her voice. She pressed the eject button and replaced the video in the box.

Will was recovering his nerve, too quickly for her taste. ‘It felt like a rollercoaster ride through the Big Bang,’ he declared. ‘I’ve never been so terrified—never. Wow. Bloody wow. What do we do now?’

‘Leave,’ said Fern.

Will lowered himself over the window-sill, feeling for the topmost rung with an unsteady foot. ‘Careful,’ said his sister. She thought she might have been able to open the door with the glove on, but she could not be certain of resealing it afterwards, and she did not want Alison to realise anyone had been in the room. Will disappeared from view and she took a last look round, flinching automatically from the mirror, hesitating when her eye fell on the easel. She went over to it and twitched the cloth aside. The area that resembled mould seemed to have grown, closing in about the horse’s head: there was a note of panic in its midnight gaze. Fern caressed the surface of the painting with her gloved hand; its mottling altered immediately, coagulating into dark blotches which broadened into rippling bands, the colours flickering and changing like shadows in a jungle. Her fingertips skimmed the stable door, feeling for the lock that was not real; something jolted at her touch, and she began to tremble again, but with another kind of fear, a fear of her unknown self, of the glove that grew on her hand, of the thin current of power that trickled through the very core of her being. She retreated sharply and the cloth slid down over the picture: she would not lift it again. Will’s voice came to her from outside: ‘Fern! Fern!’ She pulled at the glove —she thought it was stuck but it slipped off easily. Putting it back in the drawer, she straightened the peacock coverlet and made her exit through the window, pausing to fiddle it shut before she descended the ladder.

‘Do you think she’ll guess we’ve been there?’ asked Will. He had obviously forgotten his light-hearted dismissal of Alison earlier that week.

‘I hope not,’ said Fern.

They were both relieved when Lougarry returned after supper, stretching out at their feet with the relaxed air of an animal settling down for the night. A huge yawn showed the pointed canines, dagger-sharp and yellow as ivory, but Fern was oblivious, sitting on the floor to treat her healing wounds and for the first time venturing to rub her cheek against the dense softness of the ruff. ‘Stay with us,’ she whispered. ‘Stay tonight. Make me as brave as a wolf. I need courage right now.’ She didn’t register her own admission of Lougarry’s true identity. She was thinking: this is what it means to grow up, this is how it feels—to be on your own, to have no one to depend on, no one between you and the dark. Belatedly she began to appreciate how much she had always relied on her father, not perhaps on his strength but on the strength of his position, on the certainties that accompany fatherhood and maturity. She might have run the household but he had empowered her, supported her, obeyed her, kept her safe. And now, America was a long way away. She did not even have a phone number. Mrs Wicklow and the Dinsdales were good friends, but they could not deal with Alison. She needed a rock to cling to. But the rock had turned into Ragginbone and told her: Find the key, and now he had disappeared on some errand of his own. Everything seemed to depend on her, yet she did not know what to do or how to do it. She was quite alone.

‘Not quite,’ said Will, squatting down beside her. She must have spoken her thought aloud. ‘We are three.’

Lougarry turned, and licked her cheek.

Gradually, night enfolded the house, an unchancy night filled with a fretful wind that muttered round the walls, and inside the shifting of ill-fitting doors, the creaking of untrodden boards. Glancing through a window Fern saw the moon ringed in a yellow nimbus, trailing a lacework of cloud. Once again, she heard the motorbike, roaring to and fro on the deserted road. It occurred to her that bikers usually hunt in packs, but this one was always solitary, a pariah maybe, a Black Knight of the highways, armoured in leather, anonymous in his helmet. She had never seen him stop the machine, dismount, lift the visor. She had never heard his name. ‘That dratted bike,’ Mrs Wicklow had said once; but she did not seem to know who he was. As if in response to her thought the engine cut suddenly, very nearby. Lougarry rose to her feet, her hackles stirring, showing her teeth in something that was not a yawn. She slipped out of the back door like a swift shadow, returning minutes later even as they heard the bike departing. She had neither barked nor growled—Lougarry was invariably silent—but the danger, if danger it was, had gone. There can’t be any more people ranged against us, Fern thought, verging on irritation. The biker might be a nuisance but not a threat, inquisitive maybe, but surely not malevolent. She closed but did not lock the door and made cocoa for herself and Will, although it was the wrong time of year, because the drink was hot and sweet and comforting.

‘What was Atlantis?’ Will asked, warming his hands on the mug though they could hardly be cold.

‘I don’t really know,’ Fern said. ‘No one knows. It’s one of those legends that’s so old nobody remembers where it came from. I think it was an island, or a city, or both, and it sank beneath the sea. I believe there are archaeologists who connect it with the Minoan dynasty on Crete—you know, Theseus and the Minotaur and the Labyrinth of Daedalus—but although Crete has had plenty of earthquakes it’s still there. I have a sort of recollection of reading somewhere that Atlantis was a great civilisation aeons before Greece and Rome, and they discovered some terrible secret, or invented the ultimate weapon, and so they were destroyed. However, that could be pure fiction. I’ve no idea where I got it.’

‘It’s a good story,’ said Will, ‘or it would be, if we weren’t mixed up in it. So…do we deduce that whatever we’re looking for must have come from there originally?’

Fern sighed. ‘I assume so. That seemed to be indicated on the tape.’

‘It wasn’t a tape. It was real.’

‘Virtual reality.’ Fern’s flippancy went no deeper than her words.

‘We have to find it then, don’t we? Whatever it is. We have to find it before she does.’

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe we could force the lock on that desk in Great-Cousin Ned’s study,’ Will said pensively. ‘Or break into the chest in the attic. You must have searched nearly everywhere else.’

‘This is a big house,’ said Fern. ‘It’s full of corners and cupboards and crannies and hideaways—not to mention the jumble Great-Cousin Ned accumulated. I’ve made a start. That’s all.’

They kicked the subject around in a dispirited manner until their cocoa had cooled. Then they went to bed, staying close on the stair though not hand in hand, leaving Lougarry in the kitchen, apparently asleep.

In the morning, the builder came to collect his ladder. ‘Well,’ asked Mrs Wicklow, ‘did you get in?’

‘We couldn’t,’ said Fern. ‘The window was jammed as well.’

Mrs Wicklow made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a snort. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Nor do we.’

They avoided the second floor bedroom now, chary of trying the door again or being overlooked from the window, though there was no one inside to watch them. They felt as if the secrets it contained were so huge they might yet burst the seams of the walls and blow away house and hillside, moor and dale in a sudden gust of power, leaving only a black hole with a single star winking in its depths. When Alison came up on the Friday she no longer looked the same to them. It was she who had spoken the word to hold fast the door even in her absence, she who had worn the chameleon gloves that grew onto hand and arm, she who had used an ordinary television set to look into the abyss. Will seemed to see her witchy qualities emphasised: the narrowing of her bright cold eyes, the dancing lines that played about her smile, transient as water, the rippling quantity of hair that wrapped her like a dim mantle. But Fern thought she perceived something even more disturbing, a hunger that was beyond customary mortal appetite, a desire that outranged all earthly desires, as if beneath the flimsy veneer of her physical exterior was a warped spirit which had long lost touch with its humanity. ‘I wonder how old she really is?’ Fern speculated, observing her deadly pallor, the skin stretched taut over her bones as though her flesh had melted away. ‘She might be any age. Any age at all.’ A vision came into her mind of a different Alison, an Alison whose cheeks were as full as her lips, standing in a field of mud with her torn skirt kilted to her knee, gazing with the beginnings of that terrible hunger at a tail house on a far hill. Someone was calling her: Alys! Alys! The call echoed in Fern’s head: Alison met her regard and for an instant her eyes widened as if she too heard it—then voice and vision were gone and there was nothing between them but the supper table. In the hall, the telephone rang. Fern got there first, thankful to hear her father’s greeting, but Alison was on her heels, snatching the receiver almost before she had spoken, her smile a triangle of glitter, her grip on Fern’s wrist like a vice. Fern withdrew, frightened by the strength in those lissom fingers, annoyed with herself for her fright. The thought of Lougarry heartened her: the wolf had stayed out of sight since Alison’s return but Fern had seen her shadow in the garden and her silhouette atop the slope against the sky. She knew they were not abandoned.

‘Sorry,’ Alison said, coming back into the kitchen. ‘I didn’t mean to monopolise Robin like that, but there was something important I needed to ask him, and then I’m afraid he had to go.’

‘What was so important?’ asked Will.

‘It’s about the barn. Incidentally, my friend is coming to look at it tomorrow. Well probably move the boat out then. We have a lot of measuring to do.’

‘You won’t damage the boat, will you?’ Will was anxious.

‘Measuring,’ said Fern. ‘That sounds very important.’

Alison’s stare grew colder than ever, but Fern merely looked ingenuous. She was still young enough, she hoped, to get away with that.

That night, she fell asleep to dream of Alison in the mud-field, barefoot in the dirt, and the one calling her was a gipsy-faced man in patched breeches, but she did not listen: her attention was fixed on the distant house. She raised her hand, and the moisture poured out of the earth and condensed into great clouds, and the lightning fell, striking the gabled roof, and the man was on his knees in the field, but she would not see him. The thunder rolled, and in the next illumination Fern saw Alison’s face change, shrinking in upon itself until the bones shone white through transparent skin, and her heart was a red glow pounding visibly behind the webbing of her ribs. Fern woke up shivering, the sweat chill on her brow. She had an idea some noise had aroused her, a thunderclap maybe, spilling over from her dream; but the night outside was still. Then she heard the footsteps in the passage, light steady steps, moving towards the stair. There was no sniffing, nothing to suggest an unwanted visitor. She opened her door and looked out.

It was Will. She called his name very softly, inherently cautious, but he did not respond: as he turned to descend the staircase she saw that his eyes were closed. Just after their mother’s death he had developed a tendency to sleep-walk, but it had not lasted long and she had believed he was permanently cured. She followed him, knowing he should not be woken, determined to steer him back to his bed as soon as she had the opportunity. At the first bend of the stair she halted. The hall below should have been in darkness, but a single shaft of light cut across it like a path, and Will moved along it as if drawn by a magnetic pull. The light was not the feeble glow of waning electricity: it was a pale cold brilliance, like concentrated moonlight, and it ran from the door of the drawing room to the stair’s foot, where it was abruptly cut off, though Fern could see nothing that might occlude its passage. Within the drawing room there were voices which she could not distinguish. She whispered Will but her vocal chords were numb and anyway, it was too late. He had already disappeared through the open door.

She descended a few more steps, meticulously silent, circumspect beyond the reach of panic, though the panic was there inside her, tugging at her heart. But something deeper than instinct told her this was the moment, the borderline of danger: whatever was in that room was deadlier far than the night hunter who left no mark or the secrets of Alison’s personal sanctum. When she reached floor level she picked her way around the beam of light, letting not so much as a fingertip or a toe intrude on it. The voices were clearly audible now, two of them, one a woman, presumably Alison, though her usual deliberately modulated accents had acquired contralto depth and an edge of adamant, the other a grey, atonal sort of voice, way down the scale, a voice with a judder in it like stone grinding on stone, gravelly about the vowels, grating on the consonants. And in between, answering questions in the dulled timbre of a hypnotic, there came a third. Will. The urgency that gripped Fern was more powerful than fear, more desperate than curiosity. She crept towards the door, dropping to a crouch as she drew near. The back of an armchair a little way inside the room narrowed the beam, casting a shadow that stretched to the hall, and into that shadow Fern crawled, driven by a compulsion beyond courage, any whisper of movement overlaid by the loudness of the voices and a hissing, snapping noise like the erratic susurration of a damp fire. Very carefully, lowering her chin almost to the floor, she craned round in the lee of the chair until she could see what was happening.

Halfway down the long room, a fire burned in the unused hearth, a fire without smoke or ash, the crystalline fuel crackling into bluish-white flames and spitting vicious sparks that ate into nearby upholstery. In front of it the carpet had been rolled back and smouldering lines were drawn on the bare boards: a circle within a pentagram, and other symbols that Fern could not make out. She was not certain if the strange cold radiance came from the fire or the sizzling lines. Alison stood outside the pentagram, opposite the hearth, wearing a red wool dress empurpled by the light, so moulded to her thin figure that the shallow mounds of her breasts, her rigid nipples, the nodules of her hip-bones were all clearly delineated. There was a blue glow on her face and her streaming hair had a virescent tinge. Within the circle, his eyes still closed, stood Will. And beside the fire, on a low plinth, was the source of the grey voice. The idol. Fern saw the stone lips moving and a pale gleam between widened eyelids. Her reason told her it was impossible, sight and hearing must have cheated her; but although her brain screamed in protest what she saw did not change. Her shock was so great it took her several seconds to tune in to the interrogation.

‘Did you try the door to my room?’ Alison was asking.

‘Yes,’ Will said. Behind the chair Fern stiffened; her knees seemed to be glued to the floor.

‘Could you open it?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It was stuck,’ Will said, ‘and it stung my hand.’

‘He knows nothing,’ said the idol. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘I must be sure.’ Outside the pentagram, Alison paced restlessly to and fro, her dress winnowing against her thighs. ‘Did your sister try it too?’ Will assented. ‘And with the same result? Good. Perhaps you will know better than to pry in the future.’

‘He’s asleep,’ said the idol. ‘Don’t indulge yourself.’

‘What about the key?’ Alison continued. ‘Have you found it?’

Will seemed puzzled. ‘Which key?’

‘Which key are you looking for?’

‘The key to the chest in the attic,’ he answered promptly, ‘and to Great-Cousin Ned’s writing desk.’

In her hiding-place, Fern blenched to recall how nearly she had told him, how close they trod to disaster. If Alison were to ask the wrong question…

‘What do you expect to find there?’

‘Treasure,’ Will responded after a pause.

‘What treasure?’

‘Great-Cousin Ned’s treasure that he brought back from abroad.’ Think of doubloons, besought Fern in the paralysis of her mind. Apes and peacocks. Pieces of eight. Don’t think of Atlantis. ‘Pirates’ treasure.’

‘Let the fool go,’ said the idol. ‘He’s a child playing storybook games. Send him to bed.’

‘Very well.’ Alison made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Go back to your room; sleep; in the morning, you will remember nothing.’ Will stepped out of the circle, walking towards the hall. Fern stayed where she was. The partial release of tension had left her shuddering, too unsteady to move; she could only trust the looming chair-back would be an adequate shield.

‘Now for the girl,’ Alison said.

‘No.’

‘Why not? She’s sly and much too clever for her own good. Do you think I can’t control her? A teenage brat? I will probe her brain like soft clay, I will pull out the strands of her thought until her consciousness is void, I will—’

‘No.’ The interdiction was final. Fern, clenching her will to resist she knew not what, felt disaster brush by her yet again. ‘She’s at a dangerous age. If she has the Gift, now is the time when it might be woken. Summon her to the circle, and the touch of power could rouse a response we do not need. Do you want to have to destroy her?’