Comet Weather

by Liz Williams

  Thoughtfully she went into the galley kitchen, where Ben’s Siameses sat on a windowsill apiece, looking out. Stella liked cats and tried to make friends, but both proved immune to fuss. She sighed. Wine, you say? She opened the fridge and found a half bottle of Pinot, some of which she decanted into a glass. Might as well enjoy herself while she was in residence, although she’d stop at one, just in case Dana turned up: Stella was willing to bet that she had the keys to the flat and she didn’t like the idea of losing her edge in front of the other young woman. Keep your wits about you, my girl. But Dana was back in Somerset, or had been yesterday: yet she seemed to be in all manner of places at once, and Stella could not quite shake the memory of that long dark thing slinking into the hedge. Thoughtfully, holding her glass of wine by the bowl, Stella went upstairs.

  Nothing like nosing about in other people’s bathroom cabinets. Ben’s had a minimum of masculine product and a large quantity of very girly, very expensive cosmetics and hair stuff. Bingo, thought Stella, unless Ben had decided to explore his female side. It was neatly arranged in the cabinet itself, not down on the floor in a sponge bag; it looked as though it belonged. She didn’t want to poke about too extensively, because Dana struck her as the sort who might lay little traps. She closed the cabinet door with care and went back out onto the landing. She found herself balking slightly at the prospect of investigating the bedroom, but her sister’s relationship was at stake, Stella told herself. Besides, the door was partly open. She looked through, noting a fairly ordinary décor, no visible sex aids, thank God, and a couple of rather spiffy frocks hanging up on the wardrobe door.

  And the thing hanging from the sash window. Which was a – what? Stella frowned. A highly unattractive piece of found art? A bird’s nest? She stepped into the bedroom for a closer look. It was a fist-sized tangle of stuff – twigs, thorns, small bones. It reminded her of a really big owl pellet and it stank of sour milk. It was tied up with red thread and dangled temptingly from the sash – all she would have to do would be to reach out and take hold and – oh no you don’t, Stella said out loud. Then the doorbell shrilled, making her jump. What if it had conjured Dana up? – because she was sure she knew the architect of the thing. She ran down to the kitchen window, which overlooked the narrow street, and saw a brown and orange van and a man with a clipboard.

  Ben’s prediction had been right. Stella opened the door, scrawled a signature with the electronic pen, and hauled a surprisingly large box that felt from its shifting weight as though it contained papers, back up the stairs. Her task complete, Stella swigged the rest of the wine, washed and replaced the glass and went back down to the front door, where she hesitated. No, don’t leave a note. Somehow she did not think Ben would be telling Dana about her visit and she wasn’t sure that she wanted Dana to know.

  Besides, she felt that something else might well be relaying that information. After some thought, she went back up to the kitchen and rummaged about in the cupboards – surprisingly well stocked for a newly single bloke, like the fridge, but Ben always had been a bit of a foodie and perhaps she was being sexist. She found a half-empty packet of table salt and took it up to the bathroom, where she decanted a quantity of the salt into a toothbrush glass, then filled it with water. Watching the little swirling grains of salt dissolve, Stella kept one ear out for the betraying signs of the front door opening. She felt jumpy and twitchy, rabbit-wild, but she was damned if she was just going to slip away without doing something. When the water was cloudy white, she went into the bedroom and flicked it over the thing hanging up in the window, whispering all the prayers she could remember and a Buddhist mantra she’d once learned from a yoga teacher for good measure. Just in case; you never knew. Then she plucked a tissue from the neat box beside the bed, ducked it into the glass and ran the wet paper along the sill and up the sides of the window, as far as she could reach.

  Just thought I’d do a spot of cleaning, while I was waiting.

  She stared hard at the mass of twigs, half-hoping it would shrivel. It did not, but a moment later, following a draft she could not feel, it twisted once on its string and then unravelled back again to rest. It startled Stella, but she felt that, somehow, this might do. For now. Downstairs, something shrieked and Stella nearly jumped out of her skin before remembering the cats. Heart hammering, she ran lightly down the stairs and out, not looking back.

  By the time she reached the Tube it was almost dark, a murky blue twilight descending onto the city. She didn’t feel quite ready to go back to her sister’s just yet; a reconnection with London beckoned now she was here. She caught the Tube down to Bank and walked along the river to London Bridge, enjoying the cold Thames-side air and the lights of the city. The enormous splinter of the Shard loomed over the south bank, dominating the skyline. She looked back once, over her shoulder, but the smudge of the comet was not visible against the brightness of the lights; you might stand a better chance of seeing it from Hampstead or somewhere high. The river slapped against its confining wall and Stella thought of Alys, alder-chained. She felt torn between peculiar responsibilities, but Luna and Bee had shouldered some of the burden. They were going down to the church this evening, to see what might be seen. Stella wondered how they’d get on. In the meantime, she needed to cheer Serena up. Get her out of the house – Bella would be fine for a couple of hours – take her to a gastropub. Get her drunk and get her to have a good cry – time honoured, although it wasn’t really controlled Serena’s way of doing things.

  When she got back to the house, Serena took so long to answer the door that Stella began to wonder if she had gone out. Or – God, come on, Serena.

  “Sorry,” her sister said, when she finally appeared. “I was upstairs.” Her anxious face sharpened. “Did you –?”

  “He’s fine,” Stella said, coming into the hall and depositing the bottles she had purchased en route. “Not dead, not catfood. I saw him, we talked a bit, and I’ll tell you everything over dinner.”

  “Thank God.” Serena pointed to the ceiling. “Come and look at this.”

  Stella thought she was referring to a piece of work, but Serena led her all the way up the stairs to the loft conversion, used as a spare room, and the French windows that led onto the roof terrace. From here, one could see out across Portobello, but Serena pointed east, downriver.

  “It’s our comet!” A smudge was visible, in the direction of Canary Wharf.

  Bee

  Bee was enjoying Luna’s presence in the house. Of them all, Luna had been the one about whom she worried most: Serena was successful, Stella was flighty but, like a swallow, always came homing back again. Yet Bee had always feared that Luna, fuelled by some inner discontent, would go away and never come back. But here she was, with Sam and a baby on the way, and showing no signs of going anywhere. Having a child changes you, Serena had said, you become more fearful and, perhaps, less angry with the world, more protective. Certainly Luna showed fewer signs of her earlier anger now: she wasn’t exactly inhabiting a Madonna-like calm, but she was more cheerful, less restless. She had always been practical and now that quality was coming to the fore.

  She was being practical now, as they sat around the kitchen table with a map. Stella was still in London, but no one felt they could wait. The accounts of Alys, first on Dartmoor and then in the church, had alarmed Bee. Usually cautious, she felt they should act, now the comet was here. So they were studying the map. Dark thought they should go via the watercourse, that there would be a way in.

  “Streams have memories. And wells. They’re ancient enough for those memories to linger, even if they’ve changed.”

  “What about the lych path?” Sam asked. Bee saw his eyes meet those of the ghost, an understanding pass between them.

  “It’s too risky,” Dark said, and Sam nodded. Bee did not know what they meant, but Luna said.

  “What about Grandpa?”

  Bee hoped to speak to her grandfather, that Abraham might be able to advise. Sam wanted to come,
but Luna persuaded him to stay behind and hold the fort. “Women’s work, Sam. Your gran would tell you the same.” After a moment, he nodded.

  “All right. Is Dark going with you?”

  “Hard to tell,” Luna said.

  They pulled on wellingtons and waterproofs, with thick sweaters underneath. “After all,” Luna said, “It’s not where we are, but where we might be going, isn’t it?”

  The stream which ran past the church was the same one that flanked the orchard, rushy and shallow. Feeling a little foolish, they stepped into it; Bee half expected the world to change, but it did not. A yellow smear in the west showed the passage of the sinking sun. Apple branches grew low over the water; they had to duck and weave, and the stream breathed out coldness. Bee thought she glimpsed a white cuff through the last of the leaves – Dark, walking alongside. But he did not answer when she spoke his name.

  Within a few minutes they were beyond the boundaries of the property and following the road.

  “What,” Luna said, “will we say if anyone asks us what we’re doing?”

  “We shall say that we are looking for toads. Helping them cross the road. Do you remember doing that, when we were kids?”

  “Let’s hope no one sees us.”

  They had to leave the stream to negotiate a low bridge, and found themselves along the edge of a field. Long grass brushed their knees. It was by now almost dark; Bee had brought a torch, but did not want to attract attention. However, she could see the church tower looming shadowy through the twilight. The stream ran through a small iron gate and down the side of the graveyard; they opened it carefully and were soon among the ancient, lichened graves.

  “Nothing seems different,” Luna whispered.

  “No.” She was unsure whether she was disappointed or not. What had she been expecting? The world to turn sideways, alchemical transformation? She stepped soggily out of the stream and onto the grass. A bedraggled wreath of chrysanthemums lay at her feet.

  Luna whispered, “Look.”

  The air was damp and cool, but the stream was curdling, congealing into ice, and a moment later was hard enough to skate upon. Nothing else changed.

  Together, bypassing the church, they went in search of Abraham’s grave. The pyramid stood silently in the icy grass, but no blue light flickered around it.

  “Granddad?”

  “Abraham?”

  The whispered words hissed in the cold air.

  “He’s not there.” Dark was standing by the tomb, visible in an eye blink. Bee felt warmed by relief.

  “Do you know where he is, Dark?” Luna asked.

  “No.”

  “Can I ask – sorry, this is probably really rude. But when you’re not – here, where are you?”

  “Sometimes I’m in the past. My own day. But not quite as I was. And sometimes – somewhere else. We can’t talk about that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” Luna’s voice was sharp. Bee knew that tone: heading fast towards confrontation. But Dark did not seem to mind.

  “Cannot. There are gardens before death. I am allowed to speak of those gardens – my past, the hinterlands. But not about what lies beyond.” He smiled. “Ultima Thule. The land beyond ocean.”

  Bee knew this; they’d had similar conversations. “It’s why, Luna, when people go to séances, they can’t come up with anything really interesting or useful.”

  Luna thought about this for a moment, then nodded. “I get that. They can tell you where your missing earring went to, but not why we have to suffer, or what the afterlife’s like.”

  Dark gave her an approving glance. “You are quick. There’s a tie on my tongue. Placed there by angels, you might say. A scold’s bridle.”

  “And these ‘hinterlands’. What are they?”

  “Like other worlds,” Bee said. “Smaller worlds. Parallel universes.”

  “Like the one Mum’s in.”

  “Maybe.” She walked around the tomb and peered over the wall. The stream had now completely frozen in its course, curdled with ice. Hard enough to walk upon? Perhaps. “In any case,” Bee said aloud, “all you’d get would be a wet foot.” And they had boots on.

  They set off down the stream, having tentatively tested it first. But their boots rang iron-hard; it was like walking along a road. They followed it along the wall of the churchyard and as they walked, the thorn trees which also followed the stream’s path began to glitter and ring with frost. Above the churchyard the tower of the church, solid and squat, shone in the moonlight. Bee could see stars now, and they were not stars she knew. She swallowed hard and glanced at Dark, but he was walking fast, head down, and he wore some kind of hood, now, which masked his hawk’s face. Did ghosts feel the cold? She had always assumed that they did not, but maybe that was wrong. It seemed wrong, too, to ask. When they reached the end of the churchyard wall, Bee looked back but the church was gone. She was not surprised but she reached out in the quiet darkness and took her sister’s hand, and Dark’s. She met no resistance. Luna’s mittened fingers clung to hers. Dark’s hand was warm and living. No one spoke. They walked on, following the ice.

  Serena

  They had watched the comet and drunk too much wine, but Serena still thought that this had been a good idea, even when she woke in the middle of the night with a mouth that felt as though it had been stuffed with sawdust. She groped on the bedside table for a glass of water and swigged it back. Water tasted so good in the midnight dark that she wondered why people didn’t drink it all the time. But somehow it was flat and unexciting in the middle of the afternoon, filtered through the bladders of thousands of Londoners, even if one used a jug. She didn’t buy bottled water, being worried about plastic. Sighing, her mouth refreshed, she lay back into the plump embrace of the duvet and thought about the evening’s conversation.

  Ben had a woman there, Stella said. She had not wanted to tell Serena, flinched from it, but Stella could not easily lie to her sister. She had been a bit proud of her devious behaviour and Serena was grateful: it had put Stella in a difficult position, after all. And there was a tiny glimmer of hope, too. Ben had seemed ‘off,’ Stella said. Something wasn’t right. He’d told Stella that Serena had another man but this was news to Serena: you couldn’t count Ward and a drink in a pub, and the oddness had started before Ward had come back, like a comet, into her planetary orbit. She was big on loyalty and it would have really stung, except – there’s something wrong, Stella had said. She was keeping things back and Serena knew this, and she knew that Stella knew that she knew… It was like spies. Stella would tell her eventually but what it meant was that Stella was up to something and it had not yet come to fruition. She had always had a tendency to secretiveness, not due to an innately conniving nature so much as a reluctance to worry people about things before they were fully sorted. Serena had faith in her sister; whatever Stella was up to, it would be for her sister’s benefit.

  The trouble was, Stella sometimes thought she knew best, but didn’t.

  Thoughts went around and around, a carousel screwing itself into the floor of the fairground field. Serena had long had an issue with insomnia: it was an old friend and normally she would have dealt with it by getting up, making tea, sketching, sewing, surfing the internet. Now, she felt nailed to the bed, sluggish and reluctant to move.

  The trouble with you, she thought blearily, is that you’re still pissed.

  This was almost a cheering thought. She hadn’t spent so much of her twenties partying without knowing how to deal with that and it was a simple enough fix: drink more water. She half-sat and reached again for the glass. But the glass was not there. Her fingers met something brittle and twisting, prickling like a spider’s legs. It moved. Serena gave a yelp and jerked her hand back, fumbling for the light pull above the bed. Don’t turn on the bedside lamp, it’s on the other side, that thing is there, can’t be that drunk if you can – she found the carved bead of the light pull and yanked it. The bedroom flooded with glow. Something fell off the beds
ide table and scuttled, oh God, oh fuck, under the damn bed.

  “Stella!” Serena yelled. “Stella, get in here! Help!” Then she thought: you idiot. You’ve just summoned your sister into danger. Maybe Stella hadn’t heard? But there was the sound of running feet, skidding on the parquet floor, and Stella, clad in old yoga pants and a t-shirt that read ‘Trollop’, was bursting wild-eyed into the room.

  “There’s something under the BED.”

  “Jesus!”

  Stella took a flying leap and landed amid the billowing folds of the duvet.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know! It was like a massive spider!”

  “Holy, holy, holy crap,” Stella said. She rolled over and peered over the edge of the bed.

  “Don’t look!”

  “We’ve got to know! If it attaches itself to my face like that thing in Alien, you’ll just have to prise it off.”

  “I’m not doing that!”

  “You’ll bloody have to.”

  Serena grabbed Stella by the ankles and her sister swung down to take a quick look under the bed. She felt Stella stiffen, then her sister said, very quietly,

  “Aha.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Right. There was something this afternoon, something that happened at Ben’s, that I didn’t tell you about.”