by Simon Morden
She took a deep breath and turned around. Now the tower had vanished completely, along with everything else she’d walked by on the way. Trees; nothing but trees, taller than she was, blocking the view. Yet this morning, she’d looked out from Crows’ front door over the whole vista.
She joined him on the shoreline and tried to remember. There’d been the chain of mountains that both the sun and the moon rose over, and there they were again, blue with haze, off to her left. She remembered those from when she’d been catching fish in the estuary. Straight forward was the lake, and beyond that the bay, where the river they’d followed washed out to sea. Then to her far right was the sharp line of rock that eventually made the headland where they’d arrived.
Then she imagined herself there on the beach, looking towards the twin mountains where the geomancer was supposed to be waiting for them, where the river cut through and they were supposed to go around the steep gorge. When she’d run, she’d crossed the river and through the forest until the trees had started to thin and the lines of ridges began.
‘I think I’ve got this,’ she said, and tentatively pointed. ‘The river’s over there. The geomancer lives beyond the gorge, which is there.’ She turned. ‘The sun rises over those mountains, and between there and here are hills, which means your castle is at the edge of those in …’
She turned again, and decided that if she was going to be wrong, she was going to be definitely wrong. She jabbed her finger.
‘That direction. On the tallest ridge.’
Crows bowed low, his scarecrow body bent double. ‘You were paying attention after all. Could you draw a map?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mary. ‘I was never any good at drawing anything. I could give it a go, if that’s what you wanted.’
‘Here in Down, maps are power. They mark out the portals and the spaces in between. You can trade maps, barter them for whatever you want. Just make sure you hold them in your head, so that no one can take them from you. So, with that lesson over, are you ready for another?’
She nodded and he held up his hand to her.
‘What do you see?’
‘Your hand,’ she said.
‘Yes. What else?’
His palm was a little pinker than the jet black of his knuckles. The creases on his skin at the joints and across the width of his span were like hers and yet unique to him.
‘Am I supposed to be doing some sort of fortune telling?’
‘No,’ said Crows. ‘Look carefully.’
She did. She looked for patterns in the lines, scars or calluses. He had those, but they didn’t mean anything except a past and a present of hard work.
‘Have you looked?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what I’m looking for.’
He turned his hand around to show her the back of it. ‘You are looking for the same thing as you were before.’
Crows had no hair there. His nails were pale and chipped, ridged like the land where he lived. His fingers were almost impossibly long, and she wondered how hard it had been for him to heave shovel after shovel of coal into the furnace, in the heat and the smoke of the engine room.
He turned his hand again, palm forward. ‘Do not look at the hand. Look at what the hand becomes.’
She wasn’t seeing it. A hand was a hand was a hand, however it was held. She held up her own, but she was facing into the sun, so she moved it to block it out. The light peeked through the spaces between her shorter, fatter fingers.
‘Shadow,’ she said. ‘I can see a shadow.’
‘Good. Now, this is the trick. When you move your hand, the shadow it casts follows it. Always. Unless you can persuade it not to.’
He stood next to her, held out his hand again, and wiped a line of darkness across the clear lake air.
‘Do I have to believe it’ll work before it does?’
‘It helps. There are three reasons to do something, anything. The most obvious is that you know that it will work. You have done it before, and the outcome every time is the same. Then there is a belief that it will work. You have seen it done, you have been shown how to do it, though you have never done it yourself. And then there is the third way.’
She waited. And waited. ‘Crows?’
‘Hope,’ he said. ‘You hope it will work. You have no idea how it might be accomplished, but you need it to work so very badly.’
‘So all I have to do is hope?’
‘It is all you ever have to do.’
‘A world can’t run on wishes. It can’t.’
‘Surprise yourself,’ he said. ‘Do you want it to be true?’
‘I do. Fuck, yes.’ A talent, once latent and now woken, was poised on the tip of her tongue and the tips of her fingers, ready for her to speak and shape it into being.
He laughed. ‘Then make it true.’
She looked at the black smear in front of Crows, the way it slowly crisped and crumbled at the edges, falling like soot but melting before it reached the ground. It was his shadow, dissolving in the sunshine.
Mary took a deep breath, stuck her tongue between her teeth and wiped her hand as if she was clearing condensation from a window pane. The image was so strong that she was on the top deck of a bus, night outside, and using her sleeve to scrub the sheen of water away so she could see out.
She pulled down mist, not darkness.
It swirled about her hand, tiny tornadoes of cold steam that floated off on the shore-side breeze.
‘Interesting,’ said Crows. ‘But ill-disciplined. Try again.’
She wreathed herself with fog, and whichever way she turned she just produced more of it. She ran along the shingle beach like she was laying down a smoke screen, then ran back through the fog bank she’d created, dragging it with her. She sprinted past Crows, dancing around him, then on up the beach to weave through the trees.
When she finally stopped, the air was thick. Tendrils of vapour curled and twisted, and the wind only slowly unpicked her impromptu, unexpected manifestation.
‘Crows?’
The fog was bright, a luminous cloud with no beginning or end. Without the sky, she didn’t know which way to go, but she could still listen for the movement of the waves on the shore. Perhaps that way. She took an uncertain step forward and called Crows’ name again.
He answered, distant and indistinct, and she sighed with relief. The mist, even though she’d created it out of nothing, was acquiring a solidity that unnerved her. She started to head towards where she thought Crows was, when she stumbled. She looked down, and a white rope of smoke was coiling around her ankle.
She jerked her foot through it. It unwound and reached forward again, its indistinct tip questing and probing. In her enthusiasm, she’d done something else other than summon fog.
‘Crows!’ She broke into a run again, and it was like a thousand little hands pulling her back. She twisted to shake them off, but they were insubstantial and momentary, forming and dissipating at will.
There was something building behind her. She could feel it growing and forming a shape, and she wasn’t going to outrun it. She’d made it. She’d have to confront it. No more running.
Mary stopped, clenched her fists, and closed her eyes. Then turned and opened them again. It was like staring up at a wall of albino squids, tentacles writhing without purpose or rhythm, moving ceaselessly and never resting.
She’d done this. She’d brought it into being from her own mind. It was her, though, her life manifested as a monster, inchoate and unreasoning. From birth, through life, nothing but thrashing and never anything solid to grip on to.
Until now, paradoxically when she had only the clothes she stood up in.
She held up her open palms. ‘I’m not you anymore.’
The tentacles continued to churn. They reached for her, recoiled from her, an endless dance.
<
br /> ‘You can go if you want. I’m different now.’
They faded, grew back, faded. The fog and her fear gave them permission to exist. And actually, she didn’t mind that much. Perhaps there’d always be a part of her that’d be wild and chaotic, formless and searching.
‘Okay. Stay, then. But you don’t rule me. The Red Queen is going to be fierce and brave, and never run away from anything ever again. She’s going to be beautiful and strong and happy, and she and Crows are going to rescue her friends. If you’re coming along, you do what I say from now on, not the other way around.’
She stood her ground, and the monster folded itself back into the mist, slowly, until there was a moment when she thought it had gone, but it hadn’t. Then the whiteness faded, stretched out and grew ragged. She could see the trees, and through the trees, the lake, and by the lake, Crows.
He raised a sceptical eyebrow as she approached, breathless.
‘You know that, like most things, magic is not safe.’ His shadow-drawing hung in tatters behind him.
‘Now you tell me.’ Her own mist was a few streamers still curled in the hollows of trees. She straightened her back. ‘It didn’t hurt me.’
‘It could have done. You are unteachable, and we should stop this at once before you come to harm.’
‘But it didn’t hurt me, Crows. It was nothing in the end. I’m fine.’
‘You did not do what I told you to.’ He was adamant. ‘How else will you learn if you do not pay attention to your lessons?’
She took a step back and held her hand up to the sun, so that one side was in the light, the other in the shadow. She brought her hand down, painting the sky with a thick black stripe.
‘I always paid attention when the teacher told me something useful. It’s just that they didn’t do that very often.’
She added legs and arms to make a black stick figure, and finished it off with a coal-black head.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’
For a moment, she thought she’d misjudged the situation, that he’d take offence and storm off. She needed him, and he didn’t need her. She should apologise.
‘I … Crows. I was so bored in school. I learnt next to nothing. And that was when I could be bothered to turn up. This – this is different. I’m actually excited by something. I’ll try and do my best from now on.’
‘You are very good, Mary, a natural. But while magic is not something you do by rote, you have to learn the techniques before you can create works of great beauty and power. It is an art, and all artists start by learning how to hold a brush.’ He grinned at her, his white teeth bright in the sunlight. ‘No more mist monsters. For now, anyway. You were lucky to survive that encounter, so let us not tempt fate by doing it again.’
The grin wasn’t happy. Crows was nervous, edgy.
‘How much trouble was I in?’
‘There are stories. Some of those who have such encounters swear never to use magic again. There are those who never recover. They are broken by seeing themselves as they truly are. So said the man who taught me. And you conjure your demons on the first attempt. What you did was very dangerous.’
‘But I know what I am. It’s just that I don’t like it. I want to be something different.’
‘The Red Queen.’ He was calmer now. He picked at her stick figure creation, like it was peeling paint, or an old black bin-liner left out in the sun and the rain for too long. ‘You are unusual. Most people imagine themselves to be better than they are. Not you. You are better than you believe yourself to be. That saved you, but please, do not do it again.’
‘What did you see, Crows?’
He turned away, and muttered.
‘What?’
He couldn’t look at her, so he addressed the clouds.
‘I saw nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘Nothing? But that’s …’ Then she understood. Not nothing as in nothing at all, but everything, and Crows’ place within it. ‘Oh. You’re not, though.’
‘I am a child from a place that no longer exists, I am a man invisible to other men. As the King of Crows, I was unable to protect the people I thought I could protect. I am drawn in darkness and to darkness I will return. I have seen it, and even though I fight against it every day, I will fall eventually.’
‘You can be whatever you want to be, Crows,’ said Mary.
‘Despite my best efforts, it is what I want to be. I know about new beginnings and becoming your heart’s desire, but we must realise that some people’s dreams are darker than others.’ He scrubbed his fingers against his face and looked haunted for a moment. ‘Can you swim?’
‘Me? No.’ She was unsettled by Crows’ gloom, and was glad for the change of subject.
‘Are you scared of water, then? It was said that it was unlucky for a sailor to learn to swim: by who, I do not know, because they were idiots. Swimming is important. Bridges are rare on Down, and lakes and rivers are not.’ He took off his shirt in one fluid motion, and threw it to the ground behind him. She caught the barest glimpse of a series of ridged scars on his otherwise smooth belly, before he turned. He started wading out into the lake, the water enveloping his legs.
‘I haven’t got anything to wear,’ she said.
‘My intentions are wholly honourable, Mary. It does not matter what you do or do not wear, only that you learn.’
She thought about it. She hadn’t washed properly in days – apart from the river crossing, and that didn’t count as being washed.
‘There aren’t any monsters in the lake, are there?’
‘If I said yes, would you learn to swim quicker?’
‘No.’
‘Then no, there are no monsters in the lake.’ Crows was up to his waist. He ducked down and disappeared. After what felt like forever, he reappeared, far off to one side. ‘No monsters but us,’ he called.
He was lying, obviously, but seemed totally unconcerned about being eaten by sea serpents or giant sharks or whatever. She had a vest top on under her boilersuit which, yes, would turn transparent, but it wasn’t like she’d be spending much time with even her head above water.
She sat down and kicked off her boots, dumped her socks in the tops, and pulled at the heavy zip on the boilersuit, listening to the way it growled as she dragged it down. Crows was busy diving down under the surface, emerging elsewhere, spitting water in a tall fountain, then jackknifing under again, all away from her.
Did she dare do this? Crows was sad and alone, but she got the impression that her presence wouldn’t change that, that he didn’t want her to change that, that he simply wasn’t interested in her in that way. He’d never looked her up and down with predatory intent, and she – no: he was too different, too otherworldly and out of time. But they could be friends, and if they were friends, what else mattered?
She shucked the boilersuit and left it on the shore next to her boots, and ran the short distance across the sharp grit into the water.
It was cold like a knife was cold.
‘Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.’
She was up to her calves, her knees, mid-thighs, wading forward, ice water splashing on her pale brown skin like glitter, goosebumps making her skin puckered.
She tripped, and fell. Her arms came forward to stop her, and she plunged headfirst into the stirred-up silt. The water closed over her, and the shock of it, the way it thieved the heat from her, almost made her gasp. Her lungs strained for breath, and her arms and legs flailed as she tried to find her feet. It didn’t occur to her to close her eyes, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of another kingdom, of weeds and fishes and green sunlight.
Then she came up with a shout, hair coiled like oiled springs behind her and over her shoulders, the sun warm against the chill of the lake. Crows flipped himself under, reappearing wide-eyed and closer, and Mary used her hands to manoeuvre herself towards him,
feeling the embrace of the water against every inch of her body.
16
Dalip sat on the stone of the pit, back against the curved wall, facing the door. He’d been told by the guard to wait: he had no reason to give the man a nice name, so he hadn’t, and started thinking of him as Pigface.
He was more Cowface, broad and bovine, but Pigface seemed to sum up his raisin-like eyes and sticky pink complexion. He was casually, almost indifferently, brutal, as if that was the only way to behave and he’d known no other. Perhaps that was true: perhaps he came from a long line of Pigfaces, slave keepers who were little more than slaves themselves.
Then Stanislav appeared, entering the pit cautiously, looking up at the surrounding balconies and the rings of lit candles. Behind him, Pigface was watching.
‘Why are we here?’ asked Stanislav.
‘That’s the question I keep on asking. The answer, for me at least, is to fight.’
Satisfied, Pigface turned away to the guard room, leaving both doors open, and Stanislav toured the circumference of the pit.
‘And you have agreed to such madness?’
‘I didn’t really have much of a choice.’
‘No. You cannot fight. I will go and tell them this instant.’ He clenched his fists and started back up the corridor to find Pigface.
‘Stop. Stop. You don’t understand.’
‘I understand that you are just a boy, a child. If they want someone to fight, they can pick me.’ Stanislav seemed more than ready to start there and then.
‘They have a dragon.’
That stopped him. He put his hand on the door and leant against it. ‘They have a what?’
‘A dragon. They call it a wyvern – snake’s body, bat’s wings, two legs like a bird. We’re stuck halfway up a mountain and it’ll eat anything that goes beyond the wall. I managed to get out, tried to make a run for it. There’s literally nowhere to run to.’
‘We walked here. We can walk out again.’
