‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Daniel. Here’s to many, many more.’
He gave her a warm, hopeful look and nodded. ‘I promise.’
Epilogue
The Guardians
Back on the green, four troubadours completed their last song and exited the stage to make room for the presentation of Cupid’s Urn. As all the tittering single young men and women pressed excitedly up to the platform, the troubadours sneaked off to the side.
One by one, they raised their masks.
Shelby tossed down her recorder. Miles strummed one more chord on his lyre for good measure, and Roland harmonized on his fretted lute. Arriane slipped her hautboy into its slender wooden case and went to help herself to a big mug of punch. But she winced as she tossed it back and pressed a hand to the bloody cloth dressing the new wound on her neck.
‘You jammed pretty well out there, Miles,’ Roland said. ‘You must have played the lyre somewhere before?’
‘First time,’ Miles said nonchalantly, though it was clear he was pleased by the compliment. He glanced at Shelby and squeezed her hand. ‘I probably just sounded good because of Shel’s accompaniment.’
Shelby started to roll her eyes, but she only got halfway there before she gave up and leaned in to peck Miles softly on the lips. ‘Yeah, probably.’
‘Roland?’ Arriane asked suddenly, spinning around to scan the green. ‘What happened to Daniel and Lucinda? A moment ago they were right over there. Oh’ – she clapped her forehead – ‘can nothing go right for love?’
‘We just saw them dancing,’ Miles said. ‘I’m sure they’re okay. They’re together.’
‘I told Daniel expressly, “Spin Lucinda into the center of the green where we can see you.” It’s as if he still doesn’t know how much work goes into this!’
‘I guess he had other plans,’ Roland said broodingly. ‘Love sometimes does.’
‘You guys, relax.’ Shelby’s voice steadied the others, as if her new love had bolstered her faith in the world. ‘I saw Daniel lead her into the forest, thataway. Stop!’ she cried, tugging on Arriane’s black cloak. ‘Don’t follow them! Don’t you think, after everything, they deserve some time alone?’
‘Alone?’ Arriane asked, letting out a heavy sigh.
‘Alone.’ Roland came to stand next to Arriane, draping an arm around her, careful to avoid her injured neck.
‘Yes,’ Miles said, his fingers threaded through Shelby’s. ‘They deserve some time alone.’
And in that moment under the stars, a simple understanding passed among the four. Sometimes love needed a lift from its guardian angels, to get its feet off the ground. But once it made its first early beats toward flight, it had to be trusted to take wing on its own and soar past the highest conceivable heights, into the heavens – and beyond.
FROM
MIDWINTERBLOOD
BY
MARCUS SEDGWICK
Eric sleeps late.
It’s the curtains, the blinds, he tells himself.
‘Nothing to wake me up,’ he says.
He decides to set an alarm for the next morning, not remembering his device is dead, nor that his charger is missing.
He showers, for a long time, then goes downstairs to eat another huge and delicious breakfast. At the back of his mind is a vague thought, a mere feeling, like an itch that wants to be scratched. But it’s so faint and he’s soon able to ignore it. There are firm fresh raspberries in a bowl on the table. He takes a mouthful, then a few mouthfuls more, until the whole bowl is finished.
He sits back, and sighs happily.
Only then does he see a short handwritten note leaning against a vase of flowers in the centre of the table.
It’s a lovely day for a swim. The south pier is the best.
He picks the note up, slowly.
‘So it is!’ he says.
After breakfast he rolls up a towel from the bathroom and sets off, to the south.
As far as he can remember, he hasn’t been to the far south of the island yet, and it doesn’t even occur to him why he can’t remember if he has or not. Nor does he realise that he has lost track of time, though he only arrived a few days ago.
Homeway twists and turns past more colourful houses, until he reaches a junction, where a tiny wooden sign points the way to the pier. He follows this smaller path for a few minutes more, and then he sees the sea in front of him.
It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful, it takes his breath away. It’s not spectacular, it’s not jaw dropping, it’s simply a lovely sight, that makes the heart glad that such places exist. The greys and browns of the rocks, the trees and the wild grass, the sea, waiting for him, and only for him; the place is utterly deserted, he can see neither people nor houses.
He goes down to the pier and, taking his shoes off, sits with his feet in the water for a while, then undresses and slides into the water, swimming out far away from the jetty.
He turns and looks at the island, and feels that little itch at the back of his head again. He swims closer to the pier, ducking underwater for long spells.
Suddenly, as he surfaces, someone is there in the water with him, an arm’s length away.
All he sees at first is a splash as they dive in, but moments later, a head and shoulders break the surface in a tumble.
It’s Merle. Her wet hair is drawn back, and down her neck.
Neither of them say anything, and as Eric treads water, Merle edges closer.
There’s that gently intense look on her face again, that’s something he does remember, something that is pushing through the clouds in his mind.
She reaches out a hand, treading water, and their fingertips meet.
She whispers, just loud enough to be heard over the shushing of the waves.
‘I followed you.’
Eric hesitates for a moment, wondering, but then he’s laughing, and Merle is too.
‘You.’
They swim together, far out to sea.
They duck under the surface, twisting and turning, hand in hand where they can, and gliding through the deep, Eric’s lips brush her neck, just once. Finally they come up for air. And when they do, they do so laughing.
‘This is ridiculous!’ shouts Eric, and Merle shrugs, and smiles, as if to say, so what?
Eric tries again.
‘Have we done this before?’ he calls.
Merle is a few strokes away. He pulls his way over to her, and tries again.
‘Have we done this before?’
Merle shrugs again.
‘I feel like we’ve done this before,’ he says, intently. ‘But a long time ago. A very long time ago.’
She’s gone, under the water again.
Eric thinks about his life, something he usually avoids, because it has not always been an easy one. He wonders if a few moments of utter and total joy can be worth a lifetime of struggle.
Maybe, he thinks. Maybe, if they’re the right moments.
They swim some more, and finally, exhausted, climb onto the rocks to dry in the warm sun.
Eric turns and holds Merle’s hands. He looks at his hands, a little older than hers. He looks at her younger ones. What if it were the other way round? What if his were the younger hands? Would it matter?
He asks himself why this hand, is his hand. Could it have been someone else’s? And why is that her hand? Does it matter? And what if she were different? No, he thinks, as these strange and somehow foolish questions roll around in his head. No, it wouldn’t matter. Even if she were different, she would still be she.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he says again, and she sits up, and gently takes his head between her hands.
‘Why?’ she says. ‘Why is it? Why is it any more ridiculous than a thousand things? That the earth spins round the sun, that water can eat a mountain away, that a salmon can swim a thousand miles across the ocean to find the very stream it was born in. It’s not ridiculous. It’s just . . . how it is.’
Suddenly she fumbles in her clo
thes, spread on the rocks, and finds a watch.
‘I have to go.’
‘But, stay . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, shaking her head.
She will not be persuaded otherwise, and Eric watches her clothe her naked skin and then, like a dream that drifts out of reach on waking, she is gone.
He dozes on the rocks, the sense of Merle around and inside him, seeing her slender limbs, smelling the salt in her hair, imagining that the warmth of the sunshine is her hands on his skin. He realises that for the first time in a very long time, his heart is beating slow and calmly. Peacefully.
He wakes some time later, with that itch once more.
Something starts to rise to the top of his mind.
He walks home, trying to get a hold of it, whatever it is. He’s sure that it’s something he’s supposed to be doing.
As he enters the house, he thinks he hears the back door, the kitchen door, shut.
He shrugs.
Maybe just the door slamming in the wind, though he doesn’t get as far as noticing that there is no wind.
He hangs his towel over the balustrade to dry in the sun, and comes back into the kitchen, where he sees that someone has left him a jar of that tea, and he decides the best thing to do is have a drink, to think about whatever it is he’s supposed to be thinking about.
He brews the tea, not really noticing that it has a slightly different taste, that it has become a little stronger.
And so he drinks, and the forgetting begins again.
The days pass.
The island is so beautiful, Eric thinks, every day as he wakes up, and every night as he goes to sleep. He’s had Tor bring him some more of that tea in a tall glass jar, and he’s quite proud of the little ritual he has created for himself every evening.
The days pass.
The sun burns strongly, the summer is young and fresh, the leaves and the grass bright, and vivid.
Eric passes his time walking round the island. He nods at people he’s getting to know, and smiles. From time to time he stoops and sniffs at a flower in this garden or that.
Merle comes to see him sometimes, and he is just as happy to see anyone else as her. There was something about her, that’s all. That’s how the thought forms in his head. There was something about her. But it doesn’t matter. Not really. She seems a little distracted, frustrated at times, and Eric starts to wonder what the cause might be, but he decides that that doesn’t matter either. She ought to be like everyone else on the island. Sometimes she seems to look at him almost accusingly, but he can’t fathom why, or what he might have done. He hasn’t got the energy, his mind is too slow, and he soon gives up worrying about it.
The people are smiling and beautiful, and Eric feels happy and beautiful too.
His only other visitor during that time is not a person.
One morning he finds a rabbit sitting in the middle of the path to his door. He looks closely and realises it’s not a rabbit but a hare, long and lean. It’s sitting side on to him, but it is clearly watching him. Waiting.
He moves forward, expecting it to startle and bolt, but it does not. Puzzled, he makes a jump at it. It still stays exactly where it is. He is about to go right up to it, but something about its stare is unnerving, and in the end it is Eric who gives way to the hare, circling around it to go for a walk.
When he comes home that afternoon, the hare has gone.
The days pass.
One day melts into the next, the endless sun smoothing the journey round the calendar into one long chorus of joy. Of beauty, of joy, and of forgetting. Always forgetting.
The days pass.
It is the middle of what should be the night, when Eric suddenly wakes up, dreaming he is drowning.
He throws himself upright and out of bed, and cannot understand why there is actually liquid in his mouth. He falls onto the floor, choking, spluttering, retching some water that he has sucked into his windpipe.
The bedroom jar is ajar. Does he hear, or does he imagine footsteps on the wooden staircase? He stumbles downstairs and finds the front door wide open, but there is no one there. He scans up and down the lane, and across the meadows. But there is no one there.
Warily, and still spluttering, he shuts the door, and makes his way back to bed.
His blinds are drawn, and as he switches on the light in the bedroom, he sees a piece of paper on the floor, right in the middle of the rug by his bed.
It is a little damp from his choking, but the words on the paper are clear enough.
Wake up and remember. You were right. The answer lies beyond the hill.
He looks at it blankly, and shakes his head.
‘Well, so it is,’ he says.
He stares at the note for a long time, trying to think what to do, trying to think. He’s so tired, though, so tired, and another wave of lethargy sweeps into him.
He gets back into bed, deciding the only thing is to forget all about it, and switching off the light, he shuts his eyes.
About five seconds later, the liquid that has made its way into his stomach gets to work, and then he’s out of bed again.
He doesn’t have time to get to the bathroom before he is violently and repeatedly sick on the floor.
His body heaves and shudders, aches and wails, and when it is over, he crawls back into bed, where he spends a grim night, half awake, half dreaming.
Is it this living nightmare, or is it whatever he was forced to drink in his sleep, that triggers a flood of memories from long ago, of other nightmares?
Nightmares that terrified not just him, but his devout and strict parents too. Blood-soaked dreams that came night after night as a teenager, dreams that upon waking seem more real than the drab surroundings of his mundane room, his grey house, his ever more distant mother and father. His life.
Blood-soaked nightmares. Of another time. Of another place. Another life.
It is the middle of the day when Eric finally feels he has enough energy to stagger from his bed, but when he does, something has cleared in his head. He has a long hot shower, trying to think, think more clearly.
Automatically, his hand reaches for the shower controls. He turns the power up, and reaches for the temperature control, and slowly, fighting the urge not to, he takes the temperature down, and down and down, until he is showering in what feels like ice water. It’s agony, but he forces himself on, until his whole body is shaking with the cold, then heaving in great spasmodic shudders. He looks at his hands. They are virtually blue.
He falls backwards out of the shower, and shaking on the bathroom floor, everything comes back to him.
Images swim through his head – they are the broken pieces of fractured memories; the journey to Blessed, the flowers, his device. Merle.
He lies for an age on the floor, holding a picture of her face in his mind. Merle.
The answer lies beyond the hill.
He looks out of the window. It’s very quiet, he guesses it’s a Sunday, though he’s not sure any more.
This is the perfect time. In five minutes he is whizzing fast on his bike, fully aware that he is having to pedal hard, as he makes his way up the steep, steep hill that he knows leads to the western half of the island.
As he cycles, he repeats her name in his head, using it as a mantra to keep his mind clear. Merle, Merle, Merle.
At the top, he takes time to look behind him, checking to see if he has been followed, and satisfied that he has not been, forces his way back through the undergrowth, looking for the eyes on the rocks.
He finds the first quickly, and crawls on hands and knees to the second and then the third.
By the time he gets to the fourth pair of eyes, he is able to stand, and at the sixth, he is in open country again.
The land slopes down in front of him, a mixed terrain of grasses, rocky patches, clumps of purple heather, and marsh. He follows the eyes, and very soon, he turns a corner, cresting a large outcrop, and there lies the narrow causeway tha
t will take him to the western half of Blessed.
Again he glances behind, and seeing no one, hurries on, half running, half stumbling over the uneven ground.
THE LIAR’S GIRL
BY
CATHERINE JOHNSON
London, October 1829
You are there waiting at the door to let me in and I slip inside your parents’ shop. No, that is too small a word. I know your mother calls it nothing less than ‘the St James’ Cloth Emporium’.
I would not set foot inside in daylight. One look from her would send me scurrying away again, back to the street. This is a fact. You know it’s true. But in darkness all is possible. I say that aloud, to you, like a spell, and I feel the earth shift under my feet.
Everything is about to change. You do not know this yet. The candle you hold gutters in the draught, you lean down to kiss me and I have to think hard of something else.
Not the feeling of your lips on mine, tender and demanding, or the pressure of your fingers as they trace patterns on my neck. I could give in to those senses completely if I am not careful. But I am fifteen. And I have learned not to trust the fluttering in my insides – the swooping falling flying feeling – I must not, cannot fall.
I close my eyes and bring to mind a picture from my first few months in this city. A story I will never tell you, about a massive dray horse, beautiful, powerful, its smoke-grey coat beaded with sweat as it clattered over the cobbles down Whitecross Market. Out of control, its eyes rolling wild, knocking over stalls, the sound of its great iron hooves slipping – then its foreleg snapping, the bones splintering, and the scream. Did you know horses screamed? I did not. Then the louder noise when a man with a gun blew the beast’s brains out right there on the corner of the Jewin, children watching, younger than me. I should have known, for your countrymen have less compassion than any street bitch would have for its pups.
So all those times when we were together, when we were kissing in the long grass at Copenhagen Fields, my eyes shut tight, or sometimes open in a reverie as we two lay together and watched the clouds scud past, when you would lean across and ask me earnestly, your honest eyes desperate to know what lay behind mine: ‘What are you thinking of?’