by H. G. Parry
Charley shook his head. “How? It’s just a book of literary analysis.”
“It isn’t just a book of literary analysis,” Millie said. “It’s a book of literary analysis written by you. Another summoner—as far we know, the only other summoner in the world. And it’s a book about the construction of Dickensian London. It’s a written version of what you do in your head when you bring fiction to life.”
“But that wasn’t even close to what I was thinking when I wrote that book. I’ve never brought an entire city to life. Just little things. People, and doors, and paperweights.”
“You almost brought a part of one then.”
“That was the summoner’s notes. I was just—”
“Exactly. Perhaps neither of you, on your own, would be able to bring out a city. It would be too big to hold in your mind at once. But using your work as a template, adding his own theories and interpretations—you’ve seen what he can do with regular criticism. Eric, and the Hound. He builds on it to shape his readings the way he wants them. Yours must fit his purpose like a glove. You couldn’t help it—your minds work the same.”
“Like a collaboration,” Charley said slowly.
“Yes! If you like, exactly like a collaboration.” She flipped through the pages of the book. “Look at all the notes through this. It’s been read back to front and upside down. It’s obviously taking a long time to work out—the Street was two years ago—but he thinks he can do it, with this book.”
“If you’re right about the Street,” Charley said, “then he’s getting closer. It grew an entire alley yesterday.”
“I’m right,” Millie said. “I know it.”
“If you are,” I said, “then this getting far too dangerous.”
Charley didn’t seem to hear me. “He’ll want this book back. He can use any copy, but he’s done a good deal of work in this one. I take books back to the library that I’ve scribbled notes in all the time. I always need to track them down. He’ll come for it.”
“Good,” Millie said. “If he shows himself, we may be able to do something about all this. And if he goes after another copy, we might be able to track that too.”
“Look, will you two slow down?” I realized I was holding half a piece of pizza, and dropped it. The sick dread in my stomach flared into anger. “For God’s sake. Do you hear yourselves? You’re talking about somebody trying to bring a book—not an object from a book, but an entire book—into the real world. What exactly are you planning to do if he shows himself?”
“Stop him,” Millie said. “It’s that simple. He’s not the only one with literature’s finest at his back, you know. And we have a summoner of our own.”
“No, you don’t. Charley has nothing to do with this. Stop asking him to fight your battles for you.”
“You fight people’s battles all the time,” Charley pointed out. “It’s your job.”
“I argue for them in a court of law! Nobody’s going to kill me over it.”
“Would it stop you if you thought somebody might, though? Seriously? It does happen—not here, usually, but it does. Lawyers do find themselves in danger. I don’t think it would stop you, if you really believed in what you were defending.”
“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”
“So why you, and not me?”
Because he was my younger brother and it was my job to be in danger, was my instinctive reply, but I knew he wouldn’t take kindly to that. “Because the circumstances are entirely different.”
“They are. In this case, there’s nobody else that can help. There’s only me.”
“There’s a whole street!” I turned away from Charley, deliberately, and fixed Millie directly in the eye. “Answer me this. What do you want him to do? Why do you need him, and not one of the multiple fictional heroes and villains you have cluttering up Cuba Street?”
“You know what I want.” To her credit, she looked straight back at me—not that I expected anything less. This wasn’t a witness for the prosecution trying to get away with something. This was Millie Radcliffe-Dix. “If this summoner keeps on the way he seems to intend, he’s going to try to bring a book into the real world. At the very least, he’ll expose our secret, and put us all in grave danger. If he succeeds, God knows what damage he could cause. We need to talk to him, see what he wants, and try to come to some kind of understanding. But if he isn’t willing to talk—and from the looks of things, he isn’t—then we need to fight back.”
“And what? Kill him?”
“If we have to,” Millie said, unflinching. The 1940s made children’s book heroines tough, apparently. Or life in the real world did. “I hate it as much as you do, but—”
“Oh, I highly doubt that. But you don’t really mean ‘we,’ do you? You mean Charley needs to kill him.”
“I mean the Street needs to fight back. Your brother, if he’s willing, is our best weapon.”
“He’s not a weapon! He’s an academic. He’s a human being, for God’s sake. He’s not a figment of somebody’s imagination, and he’s not a part of this.”
“I am, though,” Charley interrupted. “I can’t quite explain it, but… it’s my street. It’s my responsibility.”
“You didn’t make the Street. Just because this summoner used your book doesn’t make it yours.”
“I think perhaps it does. For whatever reason, I’m connected to it. It called to me, the way it called to the others. And… you know when you read a book, sometimes, and you suddenly realize that you’ve been missing something your whole life, and you weren’t even aware, and all at once you’ve found it and are just a little bit more whole?”
“No,” I said. This wasn’t entirely true; I did know what he meant. I had felt something very like it the first time I had come to the city, as I’d looked out the window of my tiny student room and saw the harbor glittering in the distance and the skies going on forever. But I didn’t know it like he knew it, so I chose not to know it at all. “No, because I’m not a nut. But I take it you do.”
“That’s what it felt like, stepping on to the Street. Only stronger—much stronger. The Street’s a piece of my soul. I’ve never fit like that anywhere in my life before.”
“That’s how we feel too,” Millie said. “All of us.”
“Well, no offense, but that’s understandable in your case,” I said. “None of you are real. You’re the accidental products of too much emotional investment in fiction.”
“As opposed to what, the accidental products of a biological act?” Millie said scathingly. “Is that your argument? That we don’t matter because—despite the fact I’m sitting in front of you eating pizza—none of us on the Street really exist? Because let me tell you, Robert Sutherland, if a Dickensian city bursts into the main streets of Wellington, it’s going to feel real enough.”
“So far, you haven’t told me anything that makes me believe that’s going to happen! Books don’t work like that. In all the thousands of years people have been reading, nobody has ever brought through an entire city. You said yourself, even the Street doesn’t actually encroach on reality.”
“Not yet,” Charley said thoughtfully. “It would be interesting to find out what might happen if a fictional city does come into existence, though. The Street will technically be part of it, or at least made of the same textual material. It’s already trying to join to it.”
“I do not care.” I felt as though I were trying to drive each word through his head like a nail. I’ve never understood it, how he could be so intelligent and yet so completely oblivious. “Charley, we’ve barely escaped with our lives twice. Does that not scare you?”
“Of course it scares me,” he said, with more heat than I had expected from him. “All of it scares me. But I’m tired of being scared. I’ve been scared my entire life. I know you mean well, I really do. I know you want me to be safe. But I’m exhausted of it. Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up with everybody looking at you—scr
utinizing you—and knowing that if they see what you really are, something terrible will happen?”
I hadn’t thought about it, and I didn’t want to now. But something about the way I saw Charley shifted a little against my will. “Well, somebody has seen now. They’ve found your book, and they’ve found you. And something terrible has happened.”
“Not yet. Not if we can stop it.”
“If you’re right, there’s a lunatic trying to bring fiction into reality. This is not going to be solved by you waving your PhD at it.”
Charley flushed, and for the first time his voice hardened. “This might come as a surprise to you, Rob, but a lot of problems have been solved by people waving their PhDs at them.”
“Not this one. Not by you.”
“Not yet.”
“You always have to do this, don’t you?” The words came out before I could stop them. Perhaps I didn’t want to.
“I always have to do what? What is it you think I’m doing?”
“You always have to force your way into my life, and ruin everything.”
And there it was, out in the open. I knew as soon as I saw his face close up and hurt cloud his eyes that I had said it on purpose for exactly that reason; it was the one weapon I’d always had at my disposal, and I’d drawn it and wielded it like a knife. It was satisfying and sickening to watch the point plunge in. And yet I meant it. He knew that. It was why it hurt in the first place.
Millie broke in before Charley could answer. Her eyes were blazing. “The way I see it, we didn’t force you into our street, Robert Sutherland. You came to us.”
“I came because Charley came.”
“Exactly. Of his own free will.”
“He didn’t come for this.”
“I’m right here, you know!” Charley snapped. He’d recovered, but his cheeks were unusually pink. “Whether you want me to be or not, I’m here. You can talk to me about what I want, not each other.”
I crushed my guilt firmly. “Charley, you don’t know what you want. You never know. Getting a straight answer out of you is like—”
“Finding an invisible street in the middle of the Left Bank Arcade?”
“All right, then, tell me what you want. Do you really want to risk everything—your life, Mum and Dad’s lives, the secret we’ve all been keeping for you since you were born—to be involved with a conflict on another layer of reality? Do you really want this?”
“I don’t—”
“See!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” He ran his hand over his face. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you, okay? Not tonight. You won’t listen to me anyway. I don’t know if ‘want’ is the right word. Of course I don’t want to be involved with any form of life-threatening conflict. But are you honestly telling me you think we can turn our backs on it?”
“Yes,” I said stubbornly. “I am.”
“Go on then,” Millie said. She nodded at the door. “Jolly well leave. If you’re turning your back, then turn your back.”
“I just might! I never asked to be dragged into this, you know. I came because you asked me to, the same as always.”
“I know,” Charley said. “And I shouldn’t have. Is that what you want to hear? You’re right. I had no business bringing this into your life. This has nothing to do with you. If you want to get out but you don’t think you can, because of me, then for God’s sake just get out. You don’t owe me anything. But I’m staying.”
I had never meant to leave—I wanted to get out of this nightmare, but not like that. I had come in to bring Charley out with me. Beneath all my frustration and resentment, I was scared for him. He was being drawn into something from which I couldn’t draw him out. He had nearly been killed; that mattered to me far more, if I was honest, than the fact that I had nearly been killed with him. I had never meant to abandon him. Not again.
And yet deep down, the parts of me I didn’t want to own up to had stirred. The part that was physically ill at ease in Charley’s world, with all its magic and chaos and contradictory meaning, like a poor sailor in a plunging storm. The part that, however much I had missed him, wished he had just stayed in England being brilliant where I didn’t have to pick up the pieces. The part that was scared. Besides, he had told me to go. He didn’t want me here; for the first time in our joint lives, I knew this was true. I was used to seeing him in trouble. I wasn’t used to him not wanting me to get him out of it. I felt the sting of rejection, and wanted him to feel it back.
“Fine,” I said coldly. I got to my feet, and walked out the door. Perhaps, I told myself, it might make him come to his senses. I knew it wouldn’t.
It was cold outside. The stars above looked crisp and clear, and very far away.
Lydia was waiting for me when I came home. I saw the light in the living room as I pulled up the drive, and knew I should brace myself for confrontation. I was too tired for confrontation, though, so like a coward I opted for evasion. I was making a lot of cowardly decisions that night.
“I called you when you weren’t back after midnight,” she said, almost before I had closed the door. She was sitting in an armchair, her dressing gown pulled over pajamas. Her laptop was open in front of her, and her glasses were on her nose, but I suspected she had been watching the driveway more than her screen. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“Didn’t I?” I hadn’t heard it. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, on instinct, then swore as memory came back to me. “Sorry. It’s dead. It went into the harbor.”
“Did you go in after it?”
“What?”
“You’re clearly still drying out, and it’s not raining.” She took off her glasses, the better to scrutinize me. “Also, don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re doing that thing where you answer a question with another question to give yourself time to think.”
“Am I?” I caught myself. “I am. I’m sorry. I can’t really explain.”
“I think I’m owed an explanation.”
“You are. Look, can we just go to bed, please? It’s been a very long night, and we both have to get to work in a few hours.”
I must have really looked tired, or at least troubled, because she gave me a hard look but relented.
I spent a long time in the shower, waiting for the hot water to wash away every trace of the tunnel and the harbor, willing it to permeate deep enough to wash away other things as well. It was never going to happen. Apparently, guilt, fear, and memories of looks on people’s faces don’t swirl down the drain with soap suds. Lydia had gone to bed by the time I returned; I lay down carefully, quietly, hoping she had fallen asleep in my absence. She hadn’t, but I was nearly asleep myself when her voice pulled me back from the edge of dreams.
“I called your office, too, when I didn’t hear from you. Your intern was there. He said he could tell me where you were.”
I blinked in the dark. “What? What did he tell you?”
“He wouldn’t tell me on the phone. He wanted me to meet him. Why does your intern apparently know the ins and outs of your secret family business when I don’t?”
“Don’t meet him.” I was wide awake now. “I mean it, don’t. He’s trouble.”
She sounded skeptical. “What kind of trouble? He’s your intern, isn’t he? If he were trouble, couldn’t you have him fired, or at least ask for him to be reassigned? Unless he’s blackmailing you, and honestly I can’t see you being blackmailed by anybody, secrets or not.”
“He’s not blackmailing me. I can’t explain.”
“Are you afraid that he’d lie to me, or tell the truth?”
I was afraid of her being told the truth, of course, for all the usual reasons I had never wanted her to find out Charley’s secret, but also for more recent, important ones. Whatever was happening, this was not just an annoyance anymore, but real, true danger. I didn’t want Lydia any deeper in it. The most shameful part of me knew that I didn’t want to be in it myself. Perhaps, after all, that was why I had left Cha
rley and Millie behind on Courtenay Place earlier.
“Neither,” I answered her. “Both. I can’t explain that either.”
“Apparently there are a lot of things you can’t explain.”
She turned away from me pointedly; the mattress heaved beneath us. I lay awake a very long time after that.
E-mail exchanges of Dr. Charles Sutherland, age twenty-six
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hi Charles,
I know you’re busy this time of year, but I was just wondering if you’d had a chance to read my chapter yet? Let me know if you can meet soon.
Thanks,
Troy
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hi Troy,
I promised to read it this weekend, didn’t I? It’s all my fault, all my apologies. I’ve been the academic equivalent of the Scarlet Pimpernel this week: people seem to be seeking me everywhere. How about Thursday? Say 4 p.m.?
Best,
Charles
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Dear Charles,
Do you have a draft of your paper on the criminal underworld of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the Victorian volume? The publishers are after me to chase you. You know I can outrun you if it comes to it.
Kind regards,
Beth
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hi Beth,
Sorry, sorry, sorry (pretend I copied and pasted that to your satisfaction). It’s on the list, I promise. Things are happening at the moment.
I do warn you, it’s turning into a paper on how Conan Doyle doesn’t really have a criminal underworld—at least, not one that reflects Victorian social unease in the manner of Dickens et al. Sherlock Holmes stories glorify human intellect; his criminals are intellectual puzzles to be solved, not living breathing inhabitants of a world in their own right. The most dangerous criminals—Moriarty included—are scholars and university professors, because the threat they present is intellectual—it’s not meant to reflect real social issues, and it doesn’t really do it by accident either. Unless Sir Arthur was trying to warn the public that all academics are inherently untrustworthy. Which is fair.
