Taryn clasped it. It came up to the top of her head.
Jacob said, ‘We’re going downstream, where it’s more likely the banks of the channel will flatten out and let us roll this up out of it.’
Taryn nodded. She saw that while the blood on his dark grey sweater had been indistinguishable from water, it had flowed past his waist and was showing as a darker, shinier streak on the fabric of his jeans. She didn’t ask about the wound, because it was best forgotten for now by both of them.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked. They set their hands on top of the tyre, and began to roll it into a gradual U-turn to head downstream. Its tread was deeper than the film of water, so it rolled smoothly and didn’t start to speed up under the influence of its own forward-falling weight. At one place, where the sand was uneven, it sped up a little and tilted, but Jacob jammed his foot under its front edge to slow and right it. It wobbled but didn’t go over.
They went on that way—not looking any farther than a few feet ahead of them—towards the incoming sea.
After a time Taryn noticed Jacob’s walk was oddly flat-footed. She wasn’t sure what it meant. She wasn’t used to seeing him with bare feet. She wasn’t used to seeing him at all. But she did think that, earlier, when he’d been standing in the stubborn confrontation with the Muleskinner, his feet had had a normal spring to them. Now he was lifting his legs from his hips. He was concentrating, as was she, but it seemed to cost him; his face was stark, clenched, and beaded with sweat.
‘You look dreadful,’ she said.
He didn’t respond. He continued clumsily forward, though always taking pains to clear his length of the chain.
Taryn listened to his shallow panting. ‘If you keel over I’m gone too,’ she said.
‘The chain is long enough, and might be light enough, for you to tread water at high tide.’
Taryn risked a glance over her shoulder at the top of the bank. The Muleskinner really had gone—had made his getaway.
‘If that’s true perhaps you could risk taking this a little more slowly,’ she said.
‘Not in the channel,’ he added. ‘In this channel we’ll both drown. Out of it, one of us might make it—and both of us will if we can get someone’s attention, or reach the far shore.’
The tyre rolled over Taryn’s foot, wobbled, and Jacob leaned in to steady it. He moved awkwardly and the tyre began oscillating rapidly, then went over. Taryn threw herself onto her knees and let it land on her shoulders. It slid across her, heavy and gouging, before Jacob brought it to a halt.
Taryn locked her elbows and stayed still, trembling. Her neck and scalp smarted.
‘Right,’ Jacob said. ‘On three, together.’ He counted. Taryn tried to straighten. Jacob threw himself back, hauling hard. His feet slid in the sand. He sobbed, took the strain, and the weight on Taryn momentarily slackened. Then the tyre dropped back onto her.
Jacob collapsed on the sand, gasping in pain. ‘I don’t have the strength. It’s my back. My legs are all pins and needles. My muscles aren’t answering.’
‘Can you get the tyre up just a little?’ Taryn’s voice was squeezed and high. Her diaphragm was severely constricted and her own lower back was in spasm. ‘I’m going to try to turn over and use my legs.’
Jacob got up again and wrapped the chain around both his wrists. He planted his feet and began to pull. Again the weight relented, and then the tyre was swinging slightly above her. She rolled over, the tyre gripping and tearing her wet clothes and skin. She put her back flat to the sand and set her feet on the higher side of the tyre. Then, while Jacob still had some of its weight, she pushed. She slowly straightened her knees and the tyre lifted. Jacob wound the chain to control its rise, so that it would end up on its rim and not continue all the way over. Taryn kept her feet on it until Jacob had it steady and upright once more.
His face was grey. The long stripe of fresh blood oozing from the wound under his arm had reached his knee.
Taryn got to her feet. Her clothes and hair were soaked. The water in the channel was now several centimetres deep and coming in discernible pulses. She didn’t say anything further, just took her place, and then, when Jacob gave her a nod, began carefully rolling the tyre onwards, towards the place where the bank shelved out into the channel, and might prove a negotiable ramp.
It wasn’t a ramp, but a tide-scalloped incline, like a staircase with deep and uneven risers. Jacob and Taryn ran the tyre up the first of these and held it, tilted against the next level, while they caught their breath. Where the tread bit the side of the next terrace the sand crumbled. Lower down it came away in damp clumps, but higher up it simply lost any shape and trickled down around them in soft streams.
Jacob explained that they’d have to get behind the tyre, grip its tread and walk it up. ‘It will mean some more lifting as well as pushing, Taryn.’
He watched her digest this. She was pink with exertion but not too much worse for wear, only showing bruises at the base of her neck. These were developing slowly as Jacob watched. It was as if something invisible were standing behind her and bearing down with a crushing grip.
He said, ‘We have to do this now, before more water gets in the wheel well.’
He kept gently talking. Their efforts had to be coordinated to be effective, he said. They couldn’t let up. They’d get no assistance from momentum. Any pressure must be even. As even as possible. The tyre mustn’t slew around, topple and slide down.
He counted again and they began. The pain in his back soared. His muscles spasmed from his feet to his elbows. To keep moving he had to trick himself: ask nothing of his muscles, picture his bones—his dead bones—doing the job alone, picture his nerveless, hinged, hardwood limbs, his body a puppet his brain was making move. Brain and will. He would live. The future he was pushing towards held no certainties, nothing but everything he’d missed out on, things he wasn’t born to: significant acts, important work, some better cause to which to pledge his life. Those things, and only one certainty: pain. After this pain, more pain; months of pain.
The tyre ground its way up the first shelf, gouging a trough in the damp sand. Once it was on the sloped top of the shelf they tried to pause to rest, but the sand kept falling back beneath their feet and they were forced to press on.
Behind them the floor of the channel had filled. The tide was rolling in. Increasing the channel’s depth ripple by ripple.
The next rise took even greater effort. The sand wouldn’t hold together, and the tyre only dug itself into the angle of the step and wedged there, resting on nothing downhill but Jacob’s and Taryn’s arms.
‘We can’t do this,’ Taryn said.
Jacob turned from her and tucked his neck and shoulders against the tyre. ‘It’s miles to the back of the lagoon,’ he said. ‘The channel winds, so, in fact, it’s even farther than that. And I imagine it gets muddier the higher it goes. And it’s filling up. This is the only thing we can try.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But there’s eel grass at the top of the lagoon holding the banks of the stream together. And they’re not as steep. And the tyre will still roll once it’s partly submerged.’
‘What about mud?’
She shook her head. She said she couldn’t make any guarantees about the mud one way or another.
‘Once we reach the top here, we’ll have more than an hour until the tide catches us, Taryn. And we’ll be visible. Someone will see us and come to our aid.’
‘We’re only pushing it into the bank here,’ Taryn cried in frustration.
‘It’s a greater effort for a better chance.’ Jacob pushed back from the tyre and stood inclined and ready. He counted, and she leaned in and shoved again. They braced themselves against the tyre’s inertia and their stiff arms trembled. It wouldn’t move even a centimetre.
They tried rocking it, and it worked its way several centimetres backwards.
Jacob sat down, braced the tyre with his body and tried to rest. He tried to think. The agony in hi
s back kept goading him to movement—as if there were some position he might find that would give him ease.
Pain had put a saddle on him and was going to ride him to death.
A flight of egrets passed overhead, calling to one another. Taryn put her arm around Jacob’s shoulders. He twitched and told her not to touch him. She withdrew. The sun was burning the skin in the parting of her hair—it had been wet and was now almost dry again. She contemplated the tyre and the chain. ‘Jacob,’ she said, ‘we have to lay it on its side and haul it. It won’t dig in so much if we do that.’
He lifted his head, looked from her to the tyre. Then got his feet under him and stood, leaning on the tyre. ‘Clear the chains, and we’ll get it over.’
Taryn made sure as much chain as possible was free.
‘Don’t let it slip back,’ Jacob said. Then, ‘This is our last chance. You know that, don’t you?’
She nodded. She asked him if he was ready.
‘I’ll stay behind it,’ he said. ‘Try to lay it down gently.’
He hunkered down and put a shoulder to the ring in the belly of the tyre. Taryn wrapped her end of the chain around one hand and Jacob’s around the other and backed up the slope, pulling to the side on her right, like someone riding a plough and turning their team at the end of a furrow. The tyre tilted right. She pulled left to slow its fall, and Jacob braced his arms, his fists sinking into the sand. The tyre slumped over and only swivelled back a few centimetres. It was now straddling the trench it had made, and lying against the slope, not dug in anywhere.
Jacob retrieved his chain from Taryn, pulled it across his body and over one shoulder. He turned to face uphill and waited for her to follow him.
They hauled, and tried to climb, their feet digging in and sliding sideways. The tyre came slowly upwards, recovering the ground they’d lost. It made a small bow wave of sand. Jacob doubled back and pushed the sand away, then they tried again. Up it went, until the sand it was pushing ahead was wholly dry.
A continuous effort wasn’t much use. So Jacob counted, and they’d pull for five seconds or so, and gain maybe ten centimetres. Over and over they readied themselves, pulled, and cleared sand from the forward rim. When they were halfway up they stopped and rested. Jacob prostrated himself on the slope below the tyre to hold it in place. Taryn climbed as far as her chain allowed. She was able to look over the edge of the channel.
The sand of the inlet was steaming in the sun. The mist bank was sliding by the coast, out to sea. Taryn peered at the line of ochre and green that was the nearest land, a wetland reserve, visited by kayakers at high tide, but usually empty at low tide. She looked for kayakers, for fluorescent life jackets and helmets, but her eyes found no non-natural colours. She lay down and let the hot dry sand trickle around her neck and shoulders. She could hear the channel flowing, a low-pitched wet clicking of water licking water.
Jacob roused himself to ask her if she could see anyone.
‘It’s a weekday,’ she said, meaning no. Then, ‘If I get out of this, I’ll sit down with you and Hemms in an interview room and tell you everything.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘I mean to, Jacob. Enough is enough.’
‘Do you think if you’re promising me, you’ll not renege? Do you think your promise will make a difference to what happens?’
‘If McFadden doesn’t manage to kill me this time, he’ll try again. I’d rather the police had my back.’
‘McFadden? That’s his name?’
‘Hamish McFadden. He was a hunting guide.’
Jacob made a small breathy noise of acceptance, perhaps consoled by the credentials of the opponent who’d bested him. Then he said, ‘Our fairy friend has your back.’
Taryn snapped, ‘Where is he?’ Then she was raging. ‘Odin gets up at my session and only makes hints—as if he has to hide any interest in our matters. As if he’s being watched. As for those ravens—I thought a Valravn was something special, not just a person who fancies a little murder now and then if it comes with a flattering story about himself. A grand story. When I didn’t say no to McFadden in the wood near Princes Gate Magna, something happened—I felt it happen. The twilight turned my head horrible. But McFadden wasn’t transformed. He’s the same lurking, soft-eyed, creepy fantasist he always was. I’ve been carrying around a phone that supposedly reports on everything I say to that spook Price, and that phone is just lying in my bag in Alan’s windbreak. Where are the spies? Where are the ravens? Where is the great fucking river-raising witch? Or even the demons? If one of them was here I’d say that, in exchange for unlocking these chains, I’d tell Hell who is most likely to know what happened to the Firestarter. Because I’ve worked that much out. I’ve worked out that my mother might know. Because it was my mother who helped Grandad with the Princes Gate library when he had to sell. My mother, Addy, who is dead, but catalogued and shelved, as I understand all souls are. If the tide catches us we’ll be shelved too. But what good is that for my father?’ Taryn was crying now. ‘If I die, Dad will have lost his whole family—Beatrice, mum, and me. It will break his heart.’
Jacob drew his chain tight and got up. He kept it taut. ‘Turn around and pull,’ he said.
She obeyed him, still crying. Again she took the strain, lunging forward. The tyre moved, pushing a wave of dry sand before it. It slid gradually, steadily, upwards, drawn by his white-faced determination and her tearful fury.
Taryn was the first up onto the level sand. She was pulling ahead of Jacob. Then he was out too and they reeled in the tyre, cursing and crying, until it tipped out among the crab holes and fell with a rubbery slap, wobbling for a moment, then lying still.
They dropped onto their knees. Jacob shook the blood back into his hands.
Taryn rolled over onto her back. The sky was pale blue and crisscrossed by contrails. Too full up high, and below too empty of birds. One day on the Summer Road geese had gone over in their thousands, flying inland.
Taryn was parched. She moved her tongue, trying to stir up some spit to swallow.
Jacob said, ‘Taryn, I think you’re the Valravn, not McFadden.’
Taryn flopped over to peer at him.
‘Must the Valravn be a man?’ he said. ‘You and McFadden were standing together in that wood. One of you changed, and the ravens assumed the “knight”, the “hero”, must be him.’
Taryn frowned at him.
He said, ‘Do you suppose they’re more far-sighted than that? Or because they’re female they’re any less subject to sexist assumptions?’
Taryn ran the scene through her head without, for once, letting her thoughts fall into the darkness of shame. ‘One of them was above me in Beatrice’s oak. The other was following Shift. The Muleskinner had followed Shift. We weren’t together the whole time. The ravens could tell us apart.’
‘I don’t know, Taryn. Maybe they only register a Valravn at the moment of its conception.’
Taryn remembered how Shift and Munin would keep asking, of every male of her acquaintance, ‘Is this your Valravn?’ So it was true that they didn’t know one when they saw one.
‘It was Hugin in the oak,’ she said. ‘Because for a moment, before McFadden went off to stalk Shift, I knew what he was thinking. I believe I did. And I’m positive McFadden didn’t have any reciprocal glimpse of my thoughts.’
‘Maybe sudden insights are your brand of heroism.’
Taryn shook her head. Then held still when her neck and shoulders answered the movement with alarming rubbery noises. She pressed herself up. The blood drained from her head as she stood, swaying, looking at the marshy land miles away over the sand. She turned to check the nearest shore, looking for a figure in the shadows of Alan’s windbreak, but nobody was there, or nobody showing himself.
Jacob clambered painfully to his feet, using the tyre for support. ‘We have to get it on end again,’ he said.
The water in the centre of the channel below them was now more than a foot deep. The stream se
emed to come in pulses, each one washing closer to the bank.
This time they both tried pulling the tyre upright. Jacob stood close to it, bracing it with his foot. They hauled and it came up slowly, then fast, and they rushed in to stop it going all the way over. Then Taryn edged around it and disentangled her chains, and once again they began rolling it towards the distant russet band of reeds where the sand flat became wetland.
The tide came in. Before long, the tyre was making a wake. But the sand was firm, and the water not yet up to the wheel well, and they made good time, bowling it on, like Victorian children with an iron barrel hoop.
Taryn was sweating with exertion, but her feet and hands were cold. The mist remained offshore, but seemed to be flanked by a stream of cold air, an aqueous wind. Scales of cloud had covered the sky. Not only were they closer to shore, but that shore was more visible. The topography of the very flat land rose up and became clearer as they approached the tideline, until Taryn was sure that the creamy smear she could see above the reed beds was the roof of a coach in a car park. She remembered that, when she lived here, someone had been developing a boardwalk through the wetland sanctuary. It must be completed now.
She turned to Jacob to ask whether that was a car park over there, but he had his head down and was dragging his feet. She looked behind him at the bubbles their passage had pressed out of breached crab holes and saw their shadows stretching out. It was late afternoon. They’d been at this for hours.
They kept moving. The tyre was, all the time, more trouble to push. Water was partway up the wheel well now, sluicing about with every revolution. It wouldn’t be long before the tyre was half submerged, and the water up to their waists. However, they both knew that they were already possibly close enough to the shore to have to balance on the tyre, but not drown. Still they kept on, the goal now being to find people—to find a knife to saw the tyre and free the chain. Boltcutters. The police and police dogs. The Muleskinner caught, and that threat sorted for good.
Taryn spotted a splash of colour, far out on the spit, concealed and revealed by waving reeds. Fluorescent yellow. And then again, farther on. As she watched, all the gaps in the reeds showed the same yellow, as if someone were drawing a brilliant ribbon through the vegetation beyond the first fringe of marshland.
The Absolute Book Page 31
