by Helen Slavin
Warned. Charlie wasn’t even surprised at the thought in her head. The rest of her day, her last few weeks, even, had been filled with this unease and to finally confront it felt like a relief.
Except for the panic and fear, of course, because if you were being warned then there was something to be worried about, something that would have to be dealt with.
As she headed out into the hallway, the feathers in the skirt ruffled with a sound like jackdaws lifting from the branches of the elms at Top Hundred.
There was a chink of glasses behind a black door and a strong scent of cigar smoke that could not mask the oakmoss and vetivert she could smell from the mingled aftershave in the room. All the scents and wafts were expensive. She could see the vestibule directly ahead, the sparkle of its stained glass, and the sleek door beyond, painted matt black on the inside. She was walking towards it when the doorman stepped out of a small front parlour.
“Good evening, Miss, pleased to meet you. I’m Jonas. Anything you require, simply ask me. This way, if you please.”
His hand, like the rest of him, was giant, a paw that appeared to usher her sideways but, effectively, blocked her exit. She looked up at him, his vast muscled frame fitted perfectly into a crisp suit, a shirt whiter than snow. His skin was a deeply burnished brown, his eyes a deeper hazel, and serious. She glanced to the parlour, saw the side table, a book face down upon it.
“It’s just through here.” His voice was soft and educated and insistent. “Mr Herald is expecting you.” He smiled and took one step forward. Enough of a step to persuade her to turn towards the door. “You’re in the Montpellier Room this evening, Miss.”
His giant hand turned the knob; the door swung open. Charlie took a step forward and the door closed behind her.
“Hello, Charlotte.” Call Me Ivan moved from his post by the window beside Aron to greet her. “And how are you this evening?” His smile was genuine and nervous. His hand brushed at her elbow to guide her towards a small side table.
The room was a barrage of scents and aromas; the champagne she was offered was redolent with lemon and oak, and it floated above the beeswax scent from the furniture that mingled with dry, harsher, and more ancient niffs and whiffs from the fabrics. Old smoke, spilt wine, old men. A waft of river water through the small crack in the sash window at the front of the long thin room made her look out of the window, try to see any slight glimpse of Woodcastle in the blue dark. Streetlights winked on and obliterated distance.
“Hey.” Aron, looking white-faced, his fingers fiddling with the button on his suit jacket, came to stand beside her.
“You look beautiful,” Call Me Ivan said. “I hope the dress pleases you.” Again the smile. Aron fiddled with his cuffs now, cleared his throat. Charlie understood that the dress was not Aron’s choice. She said nothing. Her mouth was dry. Charlie had not drunk the champagne, and she put the glass down to make a ring on some hideously pricey mahogany side table. There was an awkward silence.
“So, since we are all now gathered, shall we play?” Call Me Ivan turned to Aron, who was already moving towards an elegant card table set up in the centre of the room. There were three chairs.
“I don’t play,” Charlie mentioned. Call Me Ivan smiled and began riffle shuffling the cards. As he did so, Charlie felt as if someone had just turned up the volume on every particle of her body. She struggled to focus; the sound of the deck made a noise like leaves rustling at Hackett, and Aron pouring more champagne made a sound like the brook at the foot of Banner Hill.
“The cards have been unkind to your man here, of late.”
The cards, arcing and roiling, a murmuration caught between his skilled hands. “He has dug himself quite a hole… a grave, you might call it.”
He did not look up from the cascading movement of the cards. “If we take a quick inventory of the losses…”
Aron flinched by the sideboard, still keeping his back to them, saying nothing. His head bowed. Call Me Ivan continued.
“His car. His goods and chattels… his flat. Did he tell you he’s been couch surfing for the last week?”
Charlie thought of the night at the marina when she could not contact Aron, when the flat had been dark and out of reach. She thought of the Map written over him tonight, heading to The Lea Meadows instead of home.
“So, in order to get himself out of this pit, Aron offered me one final wager, for the ultimate stake.” Call Me Ivan stopped shuffling the deck and looked up at her. “You.”
Charlie’s heart battered in her chest. There was a smothered snuffle from Aron at the sideboard.
“He knew I had seen you here the last time, that particular and terrible Halloween. You wore your wings,” Call Me Ivan said. His eyes glimmered and he looked back to the cards, his fingers working them so that they snapped and cracked once more. “Then… there was your swan dive off The Ark.” Call Me Ivan took a sharp intake of breath and shook his head in wonder. “And yet… before we have dealt a hand, everything is already lost. Your man here has no heart.”
Call Me Ivan stood, moved around the table to stand before her.
“But I suspect you already know that.”
Call Me Ivan’s voice was soft and there was a note within it, singing out to Charlie, but she was unable to hear it clearly over the percussion of her heart.
“Go or stay? Love or leave? The only player at this table is you.” His voice had lowered to a whisper. She did not move, kept her eyes on the deck. Was his hand shaking? She was shaking. He offered her the deck. “Everything depends on the turn of a card.”
She looked into his face. His expression threw her. The arrogance and authority she anticipated was absent. His eyes were bright and nervous, and bewildered thoughts scrabbled at Charlie. He looked away, reached to pull the top card and looked at it, took in a deep breath. Charlie felt she might memorise the pattern on the back of it. Leaves, branches, twined and endlessly furling. She looked over it into Ivan Herald’s face.
“We don’t often have a chance to save someone we love.” He was direct, locking her gaze. His eyes, green-flecked, his voice a deep and resonant note that took her breath. What was happening?
“If offered such a chance, I would take it,” Call Me Ivan said.
Words failed Charlie; her mind was a jumbled torrent of grief and confusion and fear. She could just about manage to breathe in, and the scents in the room began a chemistry deep within her. She turned to the door, but before she touched the brass knob, she knew it was locked.
“I would not risk my soulmate at a card table.” Call Me Ivan’s voice caught at her. She took her hand from the doorknob and placed her palm on the door itself. The wind through Havoc Wood sighed through her mind. In the mirror on the wall beside the door, Charlie could see Ivan Herald. He turned the card he had picked, the single red symbol catching in the golden light of the lamp.
“I believe in Fate, Charlotte. In the Ace of Hearts.”
Charlie breathed in, drew in Strength. Her free hand was shaking. She raised it, flattened that, too, against the door.
“Unlock the door.” Her tone was as firm as the wood itself, grained with its strength. She had no need to concentrate, the idea was there. Through her palms, she felt it in the architrave, sensed it within the wooden beams running like a skeleton across the ceiling, beneath her feet in the planks, polished and treacled brown with age. Ivan Herald took a further, hesitant step towards her.
“I believe in the wild card.”
The note sang out once more as he spoke. Her breath stalled. Charlie pressed harder against the wood.
“Door.” Her voice was a low whisper of leaves in the birches at ThinThrough. She looked at her hand, the fingers like branches from the bough of her arm, from the trunk of her body. The Strength rushed through her. The door released an angry groan. Beneath her feet the floorboards shuddered, as if a lorry was passing. Ivan Herald took a step towards her.
“I would stake my life.” Her eyes were drawn to his refl
ection in the mirror beside her. His voice, cracking a little at the edge, the note within it bewildering. A warning? An alarm?
Charlie did not turn or move, she breathed in. The breath rippled out through the floorboards again and, once more, the door creaked a sharp, fractured sound. She turned the knob. The door swung open.
She saw the Door Giant tug his reading glasses from his face, move into action to bar her way, but the door to his small parlour swung shut in his face, slammed as the main door moaned, mournful, as it opened to let her out. It was bitter cold as she walked down the steps. There was a streak of frost, a thin strand of glistering ice that caught at her mind, and she was following it, not listening to hear if anyone followed her. Not caring. Blank and bare. The wind of Havoc Wood was pushing at her, helping her stay upright as she cut down the side street. Here, the Old Chapel Art Centre and its darkening trees that shushed and whispered her onwards, and, further up the hill, the caged-in garden elms and limes and beeches of Milton Square. The frosted path winked ahead of her with its delicate starlight, and her feet stepped on, on, moving her homewards.
It was after midnight before she reached the edge of Castlebury, and the long dark road to Woodcastle lay ahead. She could already see where the streetlights gave out and, in the last fifteen minutes or so, had been aware of a dark car pulling up from Castlebury behind her. It was careful and sleek, and she was probably imagining it.
The frost had continued out of town, and she watched where it turned to cross the road and moved into the trees at the edge of New Road. Operating on instinct still, Charlie moved with the frost. It might be warmer within the trees, and she could cut across country that way and no one could follow her.
The effect was not instantaneous. Rather, Charlie had to walk a few hundred yards into the shelter of the trees to trigger it. Where she thought she would come up towards the back end of the Hartfield estate, the most far-flung edge of meadowland, instead she moved through the trees and felt the woodland shift and realign itself. No. That was wrong. She was realigning, adjusting her view. If she turned here, to the left, she would be at ThinThrough in ten minutes.
The wood began, at once, to work its magic. The ground softened beneath her feet, each step lifting the damp perfume of leafmould. Above her, the bare branches locked twigs to protect her. An owl hooted greeting.
It was the fox that finished her, the way that it tracked along at five trees’ width, watching her, halting and waiting. It was like an ember in the darkness, the vivid burnished pelt, its easy rhythmic gait. Charlie felt her emotional carapace cracking. She was not going to be able to hold it together, nor was she going to be able to tell her sisters what had happened. As she broke out of the cover of the trees, she halted by the lakeshore for a moment to try to gather herself.
It was done. That was a way of thinking about the whole terror of it. It was done. Aron. Done. He had not lost her in the card game, but he had lost her. She saw where Ivan Herald had really played an excellent hand. Oh, the trump card, the bitter Ace of Hearts. There was no gambling debt equal to what had just happened. A gusting sob of grief ripped from her; she folded herself over and tried to take deep breaths. They were all shallow and shrieking, so that she sounded like some odd kind of wading bird at the water’s edge. At last it subsided, and she breathed in deep. She looked up. Across the sheen of Pike Lake winked the gold dots of light of Cob Cottage.
44
Black Crow
Clearly, Grandma Hettie’s whisky had been too strong. Anna, weary, had fallen into a heavy sleep that was thick with dreams. It felt so tiring, that it was not a dream at all. She looked back over her shoulder to see Cob Cottage, aware that her body, the tired, run-ragged part of herself, was flat out in bed.
Yet, here she was, running through the wood. Running? No. Her pace was light and swift the way it always was when she was angry. She had covered a lot of ground, knowing the territory better barefoot.
In the trees she sensed the deer, watching the white light of it, soft as the moon, race along ahead. Except that the white light was Emz, her breath coming fast as she leapt and trotted through the wood. She did not remember Emz having four legs, but it seemed not to matter as they raced on together. Ahead was an ember, scorching a path. An old path. His old path. His old Havoc. The deer’s moonlight shadow spread like a pool, and Anna could see where the ember raced to be ahead of it.
She saw him, peppered hair, weathered face. Not unbeautiful. The tweed of his waistcoat made of threads of fire and lichen and ivy. Always he kept a step ahead, but only just. They were after him, and he knew it.
An explosion of black feathers, as if a murder of crows had fallen out of the sky.
“Wake up.” The feathers battered and rustled. “Wake up.” The crows cawed, and Anna’s arm was tugged, yanked at, so that her mind flew back to the sleeping body. Wide awake in an instant, she half tumbled out of bed.
“Charlie?” Feathers, a black gown made of crows? Anna fumbled for the bedside light, almost knocking it off, Charlie gripping her arm.
“Now. We do it now.” Charlie was dragging her from the bed. Emz, shell-shocked and pale, was already in the doorway, her jacket pulled on over her PJ’s, lanterns at the ready.
Charlie brushed them aside.
“We don’t need them.” She marched forward, her feathered gown beautiful and confusing.
“Am I asleep?” Anna rubbed vigorously at her face. “What’s…?”
“We’re going to Cry Wolf.” Charlie pushed Anna onto the porch, throwing her jacket after her. Emz was ahead, already stumbling down the steps.
“Which way?” she asked as they continued their frogmarch to the shore. Anna was disorientated, her feet bare. Was this still in the dream? She was heading in the direction of the dream.
“This way.” Charlie was striding ahead, Emz also on the trail.
“It’s the Other places,” Emz said. “That’s where he’s been hiding.” But Charlie did not respond, picking up the pace. Anna noticed that Charlie, too, was barefoot.
“High Foxes. Stride. Hare’s Ell,” Charlie intoned before her voice lowered to a growl. The sound reverberated beneath them as Charlie, raising her arms like an opera diva, let out a raw howl.
It was feral, clawing at her sisters so that their throats yelped, and the sounds rose from them to join it, a dissonant harmony that skittered over Pike Lake.
At once the air stilled, the sisters’ breath forming glittering clouds. Charlie was drawing in breath, a deep sound pulling through her, hollow as the wind.
At once, Emz saw the smoke rise through the trees.
“There.” She was running, Charlie and Anna with her, the howl skirled out once more and, as the sisters ran, each taking up a point of their triangle, Anna was aware, from the very edge of her vision, that they were not alone.
They howled onwards, up into the narrow-cut valley known as High Foxes, a place often visited and patrolled but never halted at. Here the trees were ragged and gnarled and, Anna knew, the most ancient, threading their way through a cleft of rock. Here, there was only one way down, one way out.
Their bare feet were sure as paws. Emz felt it; the ground knew her, she knew it, and boots ought to be a memory. On and on they stalked and alongside, between the trees, the glimmers of other creatures. Anna glanced to one side to see a flank, a pelt of brown and grey and black that was more than a shadow, less than… than what? The word howled from her. Wolf.
The sound they made rang itself off the stone of the valley so that the whole of Havoc hummed with it. Never. It had never been like this. Charlie beyond and ahead of all of them, like a raptor in her black feather gown. There was no stopping; the howling took hold of Anna, rushed her into Emz’s wake of whipped-back branches, the singed glow of the embers through the trees, the trace element of their prey.
They were gaining on him. Branches snapped and he fell from the trees, scrabbling up the closest trunk, hefting himself onto boughs, as if he thought they were his con
federates; but he had lost his way. The trees scratched and scuffed him.
“Bring him down.” Charlie’s voice was gruff and unlike herself as she pushed forward. The black feather gown seemed to lift her as she clambered into the nearest tree. As she hauled herself up into the branches, the feathers were torn and snatched away, the skirt tearing, but she was unconcerned. Beneath her, Anna and Emz moved under the trees. They could see where the tree limbs moved beneath the Ember man’s weight. The smoke plume curled and twisted, darkened to black. Emz knew he would vanish into it, make himself one with the smoke. Charlie’s progress towards him was terrifyingly swift, her feet leaping, her arms catching at branches, swinging herself round limbs so that he was pushed, this way, now that, and all the while she howled onwards. The sound carried blood and teeth. Emz raced to keep up, Anna rushing ahead to cut him off, their hearts pounding with a rich decoction of excitement and fear.
Anna was breathless, her lungs tight, her howl a harsh rasp of throat-calling fear, and the wolves she could see in the shadows ran in closer, pulling more darkness. Deeper and deeper the shadows set, Anna witnessing where the trees were being blanked out, closing in on the hunting party.
She could not stop. Her bones rattled over the ground, but her heart pumped her feet forward. Pounding. Pacing.
