by Liz Williams
“You’re probably right.”
Bee had to drive into Taunton to pick up a new cartridge for the printer. It should have been sent to the house, had not turned up, had eventually gone to the shop. This was the sort of tedious and unnecessary errand which caused Bee to muster all the patience she could, but she went anyway, picked up the wayward printer cartridge and a sandwich for lunch. Then she drove home through the lowering day, avoiding the dual carriageway and taking the road across the Levels instead. It was a curiously primitive landscape, extensively managed but frequently flooded: some years previously, the government had been obliged to call the army in to rescue people and sheep and cows, stranded in waterlogged pockets of land. The old name for Somerset, Bee reflected now as she eyed the brimming rhynes that ran along the road, was taken from the Summer Country: it only appeared in summer. It other months, it lay submerged. Moved by a whim, she pulled off the road into the car park by the little hummock of Burrow Mump. A ruined church stood on the top of the hill, echoing the slightly higher Tor some miles away. Bee climbed the slope in the blowing damp, causing the resident sheep to amble away from her. At the top, she leaned against the wet stone and looked out across the landscape. Very flat, bisected by the silvery rhynes. A chessboard, Bee thought, and herself and her sisters pieces upon it. But moved by what hand? Along the swimming ditches marched row upon row of pollarded willow, looking stumpy and mutilated, but Bee knew that in the spring the long whips would uncoil themselves from these skull-like stumps and block out the fields in a delicate haze of green. They were still used for basket-making and she liked that old link with the land.
She’d come up here with some vague thought of connecting with the spirits of place on this day of the dead, some faint pagan impulse, but now she was up high above it all, she wished she hadn’t. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was being watched. She even turned, quickly, to see what might be looking back out of the ruins of the church, but only the mild sheep were there, drifting across the close-cropped grass. Below, she had the sudden sense of the willows’ hooded eyeless shapes; wasn’t there an old story that if you turned your back on one of the trees it would creep after you? Bee went quickly back to the car, stumbling a little on the wet slope, glad of the vehicle’s sanctuary.
At five o clock there was a thunderous knock on the front door, making everyone jump. “I’ll go,” Sam said. With Stella at his heels, they disappeared and Bee heard the sound of voices. She waited, nerves on edge, until they returned to the kitchen.
“It was a very small devil. With a very large father.”
“I hope you gave them some sweets.”
“I did.”
After that there came a trickle of village children until seven, then no more.
“All gone home for their Hallowe’en parties,” Stella said. “We could bob for apples.”
But in the event, they just opened more wine.
That night, Bee woke with a start. Dark was not by her side. It took her a moment to come to her senses. Hallowe’en and nothing had happened after all. Bee had a hurdler’s sense of relief: at least that was over. She had lit a nightlight in the window, with some atavistic memory of it being the thing to do on this day, a glow to guide the spirits home. It had now burned out and the room lay in darkness. Bee got up and went to the window to draw the heavy curtain further aside. Rain spattered on the pane, making her start. She looked down.
Something was standing in the yard. She recognised it from Stella’s description, and Luna’s. It was the horned thing, a column of night in the shadows of the yard. It was half turned away from her, staring up at the window of the room that had been Alys’ bedroom and which was now occupied by Nell. Its face was a muzzle, the long head shared by dog and goat and deer, strange when you thought about it, as though they were interchangeable. But the body was that of a very tall man: beneath the hem of its cloak, she could see one bare foot poised on tiptoe, and its arm, visible through a ragged hole in its garment, was also bare, and human. She saw the blur of tattoos or paint spiralling up it.
Bee felt herself begin, uncontrollably, to shake. Once, not that long ago, she had looked out of this window on a summer evening, and around the round bales of hay in the opposite field she had seen a roebuck and a doe, with a fawn. The baby had been playing with its parents, running around the bale and then dodging back, just like a human child. And Bee, charmed, had nonetheless had the feeling that she was seeing something that she was not meant to see: a secret thing, private. Despite the horror of the figure that now stood in the yard, that same sense of transgression overcame her.
Don’t look. This is not for you.
She had to do something, she must wake Stella or Sam, it was looking right up at Alys’ window and surely this was to do with her mother, message or warning – Bee swallowed, stepped back and when she next dared to peek, the yard was empty.
Stella
Stella wanted to see the comet with Abraham. It had become a fixed idea, a focal point. She kept a close eye on dates and newspaper reports, logging onto astronomy sites once a day. When the first apparent sighting was due, she pulled on a coat and boots and walked down to the graveyard at twilight, to wait.
Her grandfather was there, a dancing blue flicker above the grave. Beyond, the bulk of the church towered up, with the weathercock shining a sudden occasional gold, as if powered by its own light.
“Hello,” Stella said.
“Hello, Starry. Come to see the fire in the sky?”
“Yeah. It’s supposed to be due tonight.” She was conscious of a fierce, repressed excitement, like being a child again and on the verge of seeing the sea for the first time in a summer, or going to get a Christmas tree.
“It will be,” Abraham said. A tawny owl called, up in the church tower, making Stella jump. The sky was a deep blue-green, but no stars were visible yet. She suspected that another frost was due: it had not melted in the lee of the church wall, but still shone faint and silver. Stella remembered a snowy land and standing stones; there had been no recurrence of that kind of vision, but Bee had seen the horned thing in the yard on Hallowe’en night and that was freaky enough. Now it was the fifth, Bonfire Night, and that seemed appropriate, somehow.
Since their last encounter, Stella had been avoiding Tam Stare, glimpsed occasionally in the village and once in the middle of Yeovil, where she had gone to the dentist. Stella had ducked into a shop doorway and made sure he passed her by. But she was not sure if it was Tam whom she distrusted most, or herself.
Now, she perched on a nearby gravestone and waited. The sky deepened and Venus sparked out between the branches of the yews, a lamp alongside the church tower. The moon was gibbous.
“You’ll see it in the east,” her grandfather’s voice said. Obediently Stella waited, watching, and hoping that the relevant portion of sky would not be obscured by the trees. And then, quite suddenly in an eyeblink, the comet was there: just a smudge of light, like a thumbprint across the sky. Stella put her mittened hand to her mouth.
“Oh my God!”
“Told you.”
“That’s amazing.” She wanted to run back to the house and tell everyone, drag them out into the yard to look. Honestly, Stella Fallow, you are such a big kid. But it was amazing. Bee had said of the horned thing that it had been like a transgression, somehow, seeing something that you are not meant to see, and she felt like that herself now, conscious of the honour. She waited, however, in silent vigil with her grandfather’s spirit, until the sky was fully dark and the comet stood out against the field of stars.
“There you are,” Abraham said. “It’s not going to get any brighter than that. Not tonight, anyway. It’ll be here for several weeks and it will get a lot brighter before it goes away again.”
“Caro’s Apple Day is on Saturday,” Stella told him. “The astronomy society’s coming – I told you that. Dave Reed and some of the others. Everyone will be able to see it once it’s dark, if the weather holds.” But s
he knew, deep within, that the frosty bright days would continue for a while, now that the smudge in the sky was there. Comet weather. Stella had faith, and meanwhile they were going to the village bonfire that night. Exceptional. A comet, plus fire, plus explosions. What could be better? Remember, remember. She walked home in the comet’s light, her boots ringing on the hard cold road, as the first firework exploded in the sky into a shower of stars.
She had dreamed about the white fox, in the trap, but this was not like that dream. In fact, it was not a dream at all. Stella found herself sitting upright in bed, panting as though she had been running a race. She felt clear and chilly, wide awake, and light. Just as she had done on the night when the vision had come, in the stables, she knew that something was outside, and waiting. But it did not feel like that shadowy, heavy presence. This was different and she knew that there was no reason to wake Bee.
She got quickly out of bed and pulled on a sweater and jeans, and downstairs, her boots. Then she slipped out of the back door, closing it gently behind her, and went out into the starry night. It was too late for fireworks now, though the village display had been a good one, down in someone’s field. Cold, though, but Bonfire Night should be chilly so you could get the maximum benefit from the fire and baked potatoes. And now there was a further frost. It lay thickly on the roofs of the sheds and the old stable, and fogged the windscreen of the Landrover. When Stella went out into the garden, the lavender was weighed down with it; each floret hanging heavy towards the whiteness of the grass. The half moon was on the shoulder of the hill and the comet – Stella turned, fearing irrationally that it would no longer be there, but it was still flying high in the east, as if in mockery of the sun. She made her way through the garden and then the orchard, the cold latch clicking in her hand. There was no sign of Dark but the orchard felt brooding, as though something lurked within it. Stella thought about the horned thing and shivered. She went swiftly through and into the field, where the piebalds were dozing by the lee of the bothy.
She had expected to see Alys. She realised this only later, looking back and reviewing the evening. They had, all of them, even Dark, gone down to the pub after the bonfire to celebrate the appearance of the comet. It was, Dark said, a fire in the skies and should thus be marked. They had all agreed. Stella must have knocked back the better part of a bottle of Shiraz, celebrating the fifth of November and the accompanying smudge on the pane of the night, almost like marking a birth. But now there was no trace of the wine in her; she was as transparent as glass, the stars seeing through her as she walked across the field. Behind her, the hedge was a ridge of black around the field’s rim: the pasture climbed a gentle slope, culminating in a flat plateau and descending to a stream, banked by blackthorn brake, which ran into the Horne and which marked the field boundary between Mooncote and Amberley.
When Stella reached the slight summit, she was not surprised to see a figure walking towards her. The whole walk had the quality of a dream, a hallucinatory sense in which nothing startled and all was meant, although Stella had not liked the atmosphere of the orchard tonight. But orchards were chancy places, and unruly. Now, the figure was no more than an outline of light, a silhouette surrounded by a bright haze, and she expected her mother to walk out of it. But it was not Alys, nor was it the horned figure.
She was reminded of the Behenian stars. She stood, rooted to the frosty earth, with a lump in her throat like a heart, and watched it go by. As it drew closer, she glimpsed its face within the fiery corona of hair, whiteflame starfire streaming down its back, and its eyes were narrow silver. It was smiling, but only a little. It reminded Stella of the white tigers she had seen in Bristol Zoo as a child; there was the same sense of danger, banked but yet not caged. The clothes were, very strangely, reminiscent of Ned Dark’s: a doublet and ruff, but then they changed to a pale robe, and then back again. It strode across the hillside and down towards the orchard. Footsteps made of fire gleamed in its wake, before dying and leaving frost melt, bare earth. But, Stella thought, she really should stop thinking of it as ‘it.’ She knew who the figure was: the comet, and from the look of his face he was clearly male. With horrified amusement, as the glowing shape drew closer to the house, she wondered how much havoc it would cause in the all-female ranks of the Behenian stars.
Serena
“I seem to have become,” Ward Garner said, with gloom, “a kind of agony uncle.”
“I am sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to use you as a shoulder to cry on.”
The actor sighed. “It’s all right. I suppose it’s my time of life.”
“You’re not much past forty.”
“Forty is quite enough.”
They were sitting in the Judge, just around the corner from Eleanor’s studio. Serena presumed that it had been named after the Judge’s house, which Eleanor and her silent Ethiopian now inhabited. It was an archetypal London pub: dimly lit, with a red lacquered ceiling darkened by generations of smoke and the floor was black wood. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and Serena had run away.
“So what has been happening?”
“I saw Ben. Last night. It was an accident.”
“Car crash accident, or inadvertency?”
“It was on the Embankment. Near the Sphinx and the houseboats. He was just walking along.” Head down, shoulders hunched, even though it had been late afternoon, like this, and a sunlit day.
“Did you speak to him?”
“Yes. He wasn’t looking – he nearly ran into me, so I couldn’t avoid it. He was –” She paused. He didn’t look well. Pale as paper under the brown curls, and even his hair seemed faded.
“He was really embarrassed. He muttered something, then he just shouldered on.”
“Have you actually had a conversation about all this?”
“No. I tried. When I got back from Somerset I called him, but he said he was busy. He’s just putting his head in the sand and hoping I’ll go away.”
“Men do that. We’re basically cowards.”
“Well, it isn’t good enough! At least you had the bottle to tell me yourself you were going to America.”
“I do try to do the decent thing. What about whatsername?”
“Miss Stare? I’ve not set eyes on her since I saw her in Covent Garden.” Nor wanted to. A pause, then “Have you heard from Miranda?”
“Thankfully, no. I expect, if she is not with her director, she is working her way through Los Angeles’ plentiful supply of movers and shakers. Oh gawd, here we go.”
A small group of tourists, older people and one young woman, had come into the pub and, spotting Ward, had started whispering. “In a minute, she’ll come over.”
She did, giggling. “Excuse me. I’m terribly sorry, but I really loved you in Lionheart Rising, you make such a great villain, I was wondering…?”
“Yes, yes, delighted,” Ward said, perfunctorily. He signed the beermat she held out and posed for a selfie, staring meltingly into her phone. When she had gone he rolled his eyes, but it was an occupational hazard and Serena knew him well enough to realise that he did not really mind. She played up to it anyway.
“You ought to go out in disguise. You are an actor, after all.”
“I’ve often considered a false nose.”
“You could grow a beard.”
“I had a beard in Rule of Law and everyone recognises it. Unless I grow an enormous hipster style beard of the kind that birds nest in – ‘it is just as I feared’, and all that.”
“Two owls and a hen, four larks and a wren? I don’t think that would suit you.”
“No, neither do I. However, in spite of its disadvantages, it is a job which pays the mortgage. Talking of which, I spoke to my agent earlier in the week and it seems I shall be returning to the stage in the New Year. At the National. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“You’re a bit young for Prospero, aren’t you? Or are you going to be Caliban? Oh, sorry, wrong play. I can never remember…. How about Bottom?”
<
br /> “That is quite enough from you, young lady. It’s a modern production and I shall be playing Oberon. At least it isn’t The Tempest, actually. I’d think twice about that because every time I heard the name ‘Miranda’ I might give an inadvertent twitch.”
“Who’s Titania?”
“I don’t know yet. Not Miss Dean.”
“I shall come to your first night. If I can get tickets. Do you have anything else lined up?”
“I will put you on the actual guest list. And yes, I do: we will be shooting something called Melmoth the Wanderer on location in North Wales later in the year. So I shall be back in Blighty for most of next year which is all well and good.” He gave her a considering look which she could not quite interpret. “I’ve had enough of LA for the time being and I do like a ripe old Gothic. It’s the cinematic equivalent of one of those French cheeses that’s capable of emptying entire trains.”
“If it’s going to be a historical Gothic, you might have to grow an enormous beard,” Serena said.
“I’m certainly going to insist on a false nose.”
Later, back at her own studio, Serena cast a critical eye over the clothes that she was planning to use for the little show at Caro’s Apple Day. She had picked out dresses that were inspired by the natural world: Nell’s unwitting comment about the Behenian stars had stuck. Seafoam and moss agate, bright leaves and trails of anemones, stranded with rosaries of semi-precious stones. The herbs would be given to the models when they arrived, to stay fresh: Caro had promised her the run of the garden. The girls were all local, friends of Laura’s. If they weren’t all tall and willowy, that didn’t matter, Serena thought. She’d put together a range of sizes and lengths.
She went to the window and looked up, into a thin green sky. She was conscious of a sense of anticipation. The comet was coming soon.
