‘How can that be?’ asked Ruth, watching her daughter. ‘In one world she fell down the stairs when she was tiny, but in this world …’
Regalia Mason smiled. ‘Reality folds against reality, worlds are hinged against worlds.’
‘Is this where we’ll be for ever and ever?’ asked Silver.
‘If it’s what you want,’ said Regalia Mason. ‘Did you never understand that I was your friend?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Silver. ‘I just thought I had to find the Timekeeper whatever happened.’
‘It’s so strange,’ said Roger. ‘On the day you were born, I was in the topmost attic – you know, the one with the sky window – and I heard something ticking, and I rummaged and rooted, and there was a bag, and inside the bag was a clock, with some papers that told me its history and its name, and that I had to keep it safe for the Child with the Golden Face. I knew that was you, my bright sunlit newborn baby.’
He kissed Silver and looked at her in wonder. ‘But I don’t really know what’s been going on. I hope you’ll tell me.’
Silver nodded happily. Abel Darkwater came forward. ‘May I see the Timekeeper? Just for a moment, after so many many years of waiting?’
Regalia Mason’s eyes narrowed.
Roger River looked puzzled again. ‘Well no, I’m afraid not, because you see, we haven’t got it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Silver, ‘Regalia Mason brought it back. I know where it is.’
Regalia Mason stepped forward and put a restraining hand on to Silver’s shoulder. Silver felt a chill run through her, then the sun was warm again.
‘Silver, I said the Timekeeper is at Tanglewreck. I didn’t say which Tanglewreck. It is in the world that Roger and Ruth remember. It is at the Tanglewreck where all this began.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Silver.
‘There are many universes, many Tanglewrecks.’
‘But only one Timekeeper,’ said Abel Darkwater, fastening his woollen cloak.
Regalia Mason turned to Silver, as she sat with Buddleia and her parents.
‘Silver River, would you like to stay here in this world with your sister and your parents?’
‘Yes,’ said Silver. ‘Always. Can Gabriel stay too?’
‘If he chooses to stay he may stay,’ said Regalia Mason.
‘Then we’re staying!’ said Silver, full of happiness. ‘All of us for ever.’
‘Then it is done.’
‘What is done?’ asked Silver.
‘Everything. You will stay here with those you love. I will return to the world you once knew. The Timekeeper has no power there now. Abel Darkwater has no power there now. You will never see him, or me, again.’
‘What about Toby and the kids?’
‘I will take them home. Trust me, Silver, they will come to no harm now.’
Gabriel was looking at Silver. She got up, suddenly able to read his mind as clearly as he could read hers. She walked down the drive with him a little way, holding his hand. His face was troubled.
‘Micah called her the serpent.’
‘That was when she was Maria Prophetessa.’
‘She is Maria Prophetessa still.’
‘What do you mean, Gabriel?’
‘She is tempting you like the serpent.’
‘What are you talking about? I’ve found my mum and dad, and Buddleia!’
‘That is what she desires!’ said Gabriel.
‘And you’ll stay with me, won’t you?’ said Silver, her voice faltering.
Gabriel slowly shook his head. ‘Not here, Silver, not if we have failed.’
‘We haven’t failed! Micah said that Abel Darkwater must never have the Timekeeper – well, now he won’t get it. We’ve succeeded!’
‘And given to her all the power of the world. The journey you made was more than one, it was two. It is she who must be feared, not him alone.’
Silver tried to think it through. What was it that Regalia Mason had said? That Silver was the key and that without the key the Timekeeper had no power. What power? And could that power stop Regalia Mason?
If the answer was no, why had she gone to such lengths to make an ending where Silver and the Timekeeper must not be in the same world? There was more to it than Abel Darkwater. Yes, there was more.
‘Throw a stone in the long grass,’ said Gabriel.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Micah says you throw a stone in the long grass to see if a snake be hiding there.’
Regalia Mason was sitting chatting to Roger and Ruth about the history of Tanglewreck. Silver came up and stood in front of Regalia Mason.
‘I’m not going to stay here,’ said Silver.
‘Excuse me?’ said Regalia Mason politely.
‘I have to find the Timekeeper – and I haven’t done that yet, have I? So I’m not going to stay. Look.’
She pulled the shining pin out of her coat pocket. It was vibrating.
‘It will lead me home,’ said Silver.
‘But darling, this is your home!’ said her mother, bewildered and frightened.
Regalia Mason nodded slowly. She looked at Silver for a minute that was a minute out of Time. It was a minute in every universe that exists. It was a minute that changed everything.
Cold and beautiful and tall, she seemed to hover over Silver, and then she vanished, yes, completely vanished, and in her place was a rearing serpent. Her tongue shot from her mouth, her small cold eyes glittered. Her body towered over the child.
‘Get back!’ shouted Roger, trying to shield Buddleia and Ruth.
‘I’m going to find the Timekeeper,’ said Silver again.
The sky darkened. Black clouds came so low over the house that the tall chimneys were hidden. The thunder boomed across the sky. Forked lightning, swift and snakelike, flashed from the clouds to the ground.
It was day no longer. Twin stars broke the sky. As each star fell, Silver heard voices calling. ‘Where are you? Where are you?’ One star exploded into the light, the other vanished in darkness. The lost voices could still be heard, faint and pleading. ‘Where are you?’
The rain came. Rain like spears. All anyone could do was to lie flat on the ground as the rain bombarded their bodies. Then the quiet river at the bottom of the garden rose and reared and hit the house with such force that Silver, looking up, thought the house had been swept away.
As she looked up, she saw Maria Prophetessa in the form of a serpent, huge and old, towering in the flood of the river, her head bent towards Silver.
‘I’m going to find the Timekeeper!’ yelled Silver, holding on to the sundial with both hands as the water fell down in a great wave, its force sucking her through the black storm, through the stars, through Time. She held on.
Lifting her head against the water pouring off her body like stars, she saw Maria Prophetessa rear up once more, collapse, and slither away.
There was silence. The clouds lifted. The day broke through the darkness. The river returned to its banks. She heard a bird. Voices came in and out of hearing. She stood up. She ran over to her parents and Buddleia.
Silver felt the lines of their world beginning to wobble and shift. She hugged her parents and her sister.
‘Buddleia – will you stay here?’
Buddleia nodded without saying anything. She was crying.
‘Mum, Dad, I’m sorry. I do love you, I don’t really understand what’s happening, but she was tricking me again, that’s what she does, trick people, and terrible things are happening in our other world, and, and, I don’t know why, but I have to find the Timekeeper, and I am the Timekeeper. Maybe I’ll find a way back one …’
But already her words were thinning into the air, and she couldn’t hear what her mother was saying as she held her tight, and their bodies became more and more insubstantial, and Tanglewreck itself was losing a window and a door and a hedge and a fountain, and the world she longed for was transparent as a raindrop, or her tears.
So there th
ey were, on the unmown grass, her and Gabriel, and Toby and the kids, not knowing anything that was happening, or where they were, and Abel Darkwater had disappeared and Regalia Mason had disappeared, and Silver knew exactly what she had to do.
She went to the sundial, and pushed it with all her strength. It began to scrape and move backwards, and there, underneath, was a stairway, and on the third step was a box, and in the box was the Timekeeper.
The Timekeeper. At last. Centuries. Stars.
She lifted it out, jewelled and dusty.
She opened it, and touched the wheels, moving one against the other, like other worlds.
There were the pictures, lapis and gold; the chariot, the lovers, the wheel of fortune, the world … and the child at the End of Time. It was a picture of her.
The clock wasn’t ticking, two of the pictures were missing, and there was only one hand on the dial. Carefully, Silver felt in her pockets, and first of all she put the pictures in place, one by one, and then she took out the diamond pin. She clicked the hand into place on the enamelled dial, and there was a hesitation, and then the clock started to tick.
TICK!
In London, Abel Darkwater heard it and lay down in his twilight study, the blinds drawn. He had failed to sacrifice the child. If she had set the clock in motion once again, and he had taken it from her, and offered her to the dark gods, the mysteries of Time would have been his. Now there was nothing.
TICK!
At the airport, Regalia Mason was boarding her private jet. There had been no more of the Time Tornadoes and Time was as steady again as most people expected it to be. Quanta’s assistance was no longer required by the perplexed scientists of the West, and the sinister man from MI5 was thinking of looking a bit deeper into Quanta himself.
She could not use the future to distort the present; now that the Timekeeper was ticking again, it would regulate the last few hundred years of ordinary Time, and the birth of the new god would remain a mystery. Perhaps the Quantum would become all-powerful, but perhaps it would not.
Nothing is solid, nothing is fixed. The future forks with new beginnings and different ends.
She thought about it; if the child had not begun the journey, the Timekeeper would never have been found. If the child had done what Regalia Mason had predicted she would do, and stayed with her parents and her sister in a happy free world, not like this one at all, then the prophecy would have been fulfilled very differently.
Abel Darkwater had never understood the importance of the child and the decisions she would make.
But then, Regalia Mason, who always read the small print, had overlooked the simplest thing of all; that one true heart can change everything.
TICK! She heard it beating.
At Tanglewreck, Gabriel and Silver had been amazed to see Micah and Balthazar and the Throwbacks emerging from the steps under the sundial.
‘We have come with food,’ said Eden. ‘Vindaloo, korma, saffron rice.’
‘Yippee!’ shouted Toby, and the kids fell upon the food, shouting and celebrating, and hugging each other and the Throwbacks and Silver.
‘Party!’ yelled Toby. ‘This is the best! The total best!’
‘But how did you get here, and under the sundial?’ asked Silver, bewildered.
‘All things connect,’ said Micah simply. He held the clock in his hands, and stroked it lovingly, telling Silver again how he had worked on it all through the long sea-voyage.
‘I never knew its power,’ he said, ‘but I knew what power it had.’
While they were talking, they hardly noticed a bedraggled pair of thieves climbing wearily up from the hole, followed by a man in pantaloons with a red beard.
‘My clock!’ said the man, looking delightedly at the Timekeeper. ‘Roger Rover at your service.’
‘I think you’re in the wrong century,’ said Silver.
‘I think I’m in the wrong life,’ said Thugger. ‘Can you lend us a few quid to get back to London? Fisty ’ere needs to see a man about a dog.’
Fisty emptied the dead Elvis on to the grass.
‘I reckon I can fix him for you,’ said Micah.
And the day went on. Micah offered to take Toby and the kids back down to London, if they would go through the tunnels. The kids were so excited about seeing their parents again, and Silver had to try hard not to cry. She kept hoping that Roger and Ruth and Buddleia would be sitting out on the lawn when she looked, but she knew that they wouldn’t be there.
‘Thazzit then, Silver,’ said Toby, as Micah began to round up the kids. ‘This is my mobile number, yeah?’
‘Yeah, Toby, thanks. Thanks for everything.’ She hugged him.
‘You call me and you come down to Brixton, yeah?’
She nodded, too full of feeling to say what was in her heart.
The kids set off down the tunnels in single file, led by Balthazar, with Eden bringing up the rear to keep them safe.
It was almost night.
‘Excuse me,’ said a familiar voice. There was Mrs Rokabye.
‘You are not my aunt,’ said Silver, in a voice that told Mrs Rokabye the game was up.
‘No, well, strictly speaking that is true, but when I read in the paper of the mysterious disappearance of your poor parents, and your obvious difficulties, I wanted to make myself useful. I have always loved children, you know.’
Silver didn’t know.
‘And I didn’t have anywhere to live.’
‘Oh no …’
‘And Bigamist … here he is, yes, he is quite reformed, the best of rabbits, all repentence and good deeds from now on – that’s right, Bigamist, isn’t that right?’
Bigamist had a carrot in between his teeth. He dropped it humbly at Silver’s feet. It was true he had stolen it from her vegetable garden in the first place, but, well, perhaps …
Mrs Rokabye was wringing her hands. ‘It was all that wicked man Darkwater, you know. He hypnotised me, he threatened me, and … you will need someone to cook and clean for you until you get older, and …’
Sniveller came loping forward.
‘And if you say no, I shall have to marry this man.’
Sniveller looked hopeful.
And in a world of all possible outcomes, somewhere Mrs Rokabye is married to Sniveller, and somewhere she has never met Silver or been to Tanglewreck, and the train is still moving towards London, and Roger and Ruth will come home to this house in this world, and …
TICK!
Micah was speaking very seriously to Gabriel. He came over to Silver and bowed to her.
‘What you have done, none but you was able to do. Thank you, Child of Time.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ said Silver. ‘You rescued me, you looked after me, you gave me the map – oh, here it is.’ She fished in her pockets and gave it back to Micah. ‘You held on to Gabriel in the Black Hole, and you kept reminding me about her, Regalia Mason. I know she’s bad but I wanted to believe her. She made me trust her.’
‘She be skilled in all the arts,’ said Micah. ‘Only you has she not deceived.’
He turned to Gabriel. ‘You know all the ways and where we shall always be. Shall you return with us, or shall you remain here?’
Gabriel looked at Micah and looked at Silver, then he walked away awhile, and the two of them were deep in talk. Silver watched them, her heart heavy. She would be alone for a long time now. Years. Until she grew up.
My name is Silver. I have lived at Tanglewreck all of my life, which is to say, eleven years.
My name is Silver. I have lived at Tanglewreck all of my life, which is to say until this time happened, but what happens now, I do not know.
Night came. Silver was sitting alone in the dark on the grass damp with dew. She was thinking about her mum and dad and her sister, and wanting them to be happy in the world she couldn’t find any more.
She looked up at the stars. Ora was there and Dinger the cat, and lives so far away from hers that they would never touc
h again. And lives so near hers that they could almost touch. So many lives, and this night and these stars.
The Timekeeper was in the house, ticking through Tanglewreck like a heartbeat. Her own heart was beating too fast. Sometimes you have to do something difficult because it is important. But it still hurts, and you still cry.
She heard a noise behind her. It was Gabriel. He sat down and put his arm round her.
‘I will stay here with you,’ he said.
‘But you have to live underground.’
‘Not now. I can live here with you. Shall I stay with you?’
‘I’d like that, Gabriel. I don’t know what happens next.’
And they sat together all through the night until the morning came, and she thought she saw three suns rising, and she thought that whatever happened next, she had done the task that had been given to her to do, and that is as much as anybody can do, in this strange life of ours.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to everyone at Bloomsbury, especially Sarah Odedina and Georgia Murray. To Caroline Michel, Suzanne Gluck, and the William Morris team. To Leah Schmidt, at The Agency. To Philippa Brewster and Henri Llewelyn Davies for their detailed reading, and to Lysander Ashton, quantum physicist and film-maker, who checked the science, and to my godchildren, Eleanor and Cara Shearer, who checked the science fiction. To Fiona Shaw who was always Mrs Rokabye as I was writing. And to Deborah Warner for the generous loan of her parents, Roger and Ruth, a house full of antiques, and a sense of possibility.
Also by Jeanette Winterson
The King of Capri
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in July 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
First published in the USA in July 2006 by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © Jeanette Winterson 2006