Comet Weather

by Liz Williams

  “Well,” Stella spat at Tam Stare. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “It’s getting warmer,” Bee said.

  Serena

  Up the drive and over the lawn. Leaping the flowerbeds and into the yard but the kitchen door was fast shut and Serena gave a hare’s scream. She ran right around the house, heading widdershins, past the dustbins and the feed for the horses and the potting shed, with the mink pelting behind her. What if she ran into Moth? Would the lurcher know who she was, and what? They were programmed to chase rabbits… She no longer knew what to do but with some idea of going back down the drive, she completed a full circuit of the house and collapsed, naked and gasping, against the brick wall.

  Dana Stare walked up to her. She did not even seem out of breath. “Better put some clothes on, love, or you’ll catch your death. Oh wait. You’re going to catch that anyway. I’d like to have sunk my teeth into you but I’ve got a better plan now.” And Serena saw the dull blue glint of the blade in her hand, its ivory handle.

  “It’s slate, just in case you’re wondering. Sharp, though. Better be careful, hadn’t I? Wouldn’t want to cut my fingers.”

  Serena scrambled to her feet. She looked around but there was nothing to defend herself with. Dana saw this and her smile vanished, She became intent, a hunting look. She feinted with the slate knife and Serena darted back, bare feet stinging on the gravel. If she became a hare once more – but Serena felt deep into herself and there was no hare there, nothing but fright and fury. She thought for a bright bloody second that it might just be worth it, just jump the bitch and see what damage she could do… She dodged back and Dana came forwards with her eyes shark-dead and her mouth almost lipless with concentration.

  Above Serena’s head, the window rattled as the sash went up.

  “Your sister Linnet says – you always wanted it and now it’s yours. Good luck!” It was Bella’s voice and Serena, startled, saw something in the light from the bedroom window, floating down like a huge pink rose petal, billowing out as its skirts caught the draught in a parachute pattern. Dana looked up and her mouth opened but it was too late. She dropped the knife as the skirts of the old rose coloured dress fell over her head. Then she screamed and as the dress ignited, taking her into a sunset column of flame, she went on screaming.

  Bee

  The frost sank into the ground once the horned thing had gone and a wet breath touched Bee’s cheek, a gathering sense of rain.

  “Borrowed your power, eh?” Stella snapped.

  Tam Stare gave her a filthy look. “Not all of it.” He caught his bottom lip between his teeth and gave a smug, self-regarding nod. “No, not all.” He still didn’t look human. What on Earth was he, Bee thought? Bare branches were coming out of the ground, bramble twisting. Bee cried out as the sharp thorns, too long for real blackberry, pierced her ankle. She stumbled as she stood but Dark was steadying her.

  “This is her land. You don’t command it, this is not real, this leaf-in-the-morning magic of yours. I know you now. How long have you been out of the hills?”

  “As long as I fucking well like.” But the brambles had stopped growing and Tam doubled up suddenly, coughing. Dark reached down and brushed the coils away, to melt into shadows.

  Tam stepped back and straightened up. He raised his hand. The tips of his fingers glowed silvery. He opened his mouth and spat. A hornet hummed out, enormous, and made for Bee’s face. She felt a sudden strangeness in the palm of her hand and looked down. Something black and soft moved between her fingers. Bee gave a cry and dropped it. A blackbird fluttered up. She glimpsed the sharp yellow beak as it snapped. The hornet was gone and so was the bird. From the hedge, she heard its long morning song.

  “You can’t attack me, miss Bee. It’s still too cold.” But Stare sounded uncertain.

  “You weren’t invited,” hissed Dark.

  “Oh yes, I was. You paid me,” he said to Bee. “Good money, too. It’s a bond, in the human world.”

  “I didn’t pay you to summon a demon!”

  “That was no demon. An old being, true. And prone to the whiff of a cunt in heat like any other male, it seems.” Stare spoke a word and even the vestige of light went out. Bee heard Stella give a muffled yelp.

  “Take my hand!” She reached out and grasped her sister. From close by Dark’s voice, quite calm, said, “This is her land and she commands the snares, the traps. Give me your hand, Bee.”

  Bee put her hand in his. Quite human, warm and flesh and blood.

  “His tricks aren’t real. He seeks to make you doubt yourself.”

  Doubt. The word was a fishhook, snagging her thoughts. Bee suffered as much from doubt as anyone: am I doing the right thing, have I done the wrong thing, what if what if what if? But deep down, past the fishhook’s snag, Bee knew who she was. Beatrice Fallow, sister to Stella and Luna and Serena, daughter to Alys, granddaughter of Abraham. It was like an obituary. And deeper than that? She belonged to the land, to this place. She felt her feet settle strongly on the cold earth, planting down and rooting in, and as she did so, she caught a sidelong mental glimpse of Tam Stare.

  Flimsy. Barely rooted, drifting. Old, yes, though not nearly as old as the thing he had sought to summon and control. Not human, not born of flesh but made out of scraps and patches, coming from an ancient magic, long long ago, which had grown thin and attenuated down the centuries but still sought to bring back the source of its power: that ice age world in which men fought to survive but in which some things flourished. Bee felt his link to his sister, spilling over with hate and warped desire but under that a bottomless, painful thing that might have been love. She suddenly felt terribly, unexpectedly, sorry for him and Dana both, just as the blackness was split by a bolt of lightning pink. Stare shrieked.

  “Dia, no!”

  Bee felt a wash of heat. Flames flickered through the shadows, blossoming with the colour of roses and far away a woman was screaming. Into her ear Dark said urgently, “Now, mistress! Strike while he is weakened – his sister is gone and his powers are waning.”

  But she didn’t know how to strike. She looked within, seeking what was to be found there. And the first thing that came to Bee was a memory: standing in the orchard at the start of the autumn, waiting for Dark, and talking to the elder tree. As the thought entered her head, Tam Stare cried out and she could see again. He began to shrink, to change, his white face and black clothes reducing and turning on their side and splitting. The distant screams subsided. Within a few minutes, a stand of elder rose out of the field, whip-thin and white withy against the darkness of the hedge. It thrashed once, a frenzy as though a gale blew through it, and then it was still.

  “Well, that’s an improvement,” said Stella.

  “We need to get back to the house.” Bee turned to Dark. “I don’t want to face that horned thing again, Ned.”

  “Nor I.”

  “Agreed,” said Stella. “But if we ever get to leave the house again, I suggest coming back down here with a fucking chainsaw.”

  Luna

  Luna stood on the lych path on the churchward side of the lych gate, waiting. She did not like it but she tried to feel strong, holding the space. Sam and Alys had gone ahead, further into the churchyard, to open the gate. It was very dark now, and Luna could no longer see what was happening in the field, or what had become of Serena, or anything. She fretted, events having long since slid out of her control or even her view. She wished Ver March were here, was glad that Moth had come with her. But the sky was moving again. She watched the fire of the comet gradually slide round, as though some vast hand turned the wheel of an astrolabe, sending planets and sun and moon spinning on their approved courses, with the anomalous comet roaring between. When it reached the weathercock, the golden bird creaked on its stand and Luna blinked. For a moment, the whole church tower was in sunlight, with the bare chestnut tree beside its northern wall in full Maytime candlehood. Then night, once more. But the church bells were pealing out and some
one was coming up the field.

  He was very pale and bright. Luminescence poured out around him and he left a frosty sparkling track. Luna recognised him from her sister’s description: he was the comet, its spirit, and he had come at last. She stood, rooted to the spot, watching him pass through the stone wall as if it was not there and stride past her. He wore ribbons of light and his eyes were closed. He is dreaming, thought Luna, and she stopped being so afraid. He went down the path and into the church. Luna held her breath. Then her mother appeared in the doorway.

  “Luna. Come in out of the cold.”

  Serena

  While Serena was getting dressed, her sisters gathered below to look at the smear of ash that had been Dana Stare. Bella was sitting on the bed, as Serena hastily put on her jeans and sweater, which had been sitting neatly on the bed after her transfiguration, transported upstairs by some unknown force and in the case of the jeans, uncreased.

  “When everyone had gone out, the ghost came. Her name’s Linnet. Like grandma’s middle name is. And she spoke to us.”

  “She did,” Ward said. “She gave quite a concise, but coherent, explanation. Dana, not her original name, by the way, is her sister – was her sister, they’d had what you might call a dysfunctional relationship, and the ghost has been on the watch ever since in case little sis rocked back up.”

  “But how long has that been?”

  “Rather a long time judging by the Elizabethan nature of that garment.”

  “But Dana wasn’t a ghost. There was nothing ghostly about her. How come she was still alive? She was a human. She had a brother, after all.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true, actually. The ghost implied, but did not actually say, that Dana might have come from somewhere else.”

  Serena paused mid-jumper. “What sort of ‘somewhere else’?”

  “She didn’t say. But from what Stella just said, one might start looking a bit more closely at stories about changelings.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, normal girls can’t change into mink.”

  “Or hares.” She paused. “So what does that make me?”

  “I’ve no idea. Quite cute?”

  Bella made a throwing-up noise, then said, “Oh. Or me, either. What am I?” There was a short silence.

  “I’m pretty sure I’m not anything really supernatural,” Stella said. “I grew up. I remember growing up. Everyone else remembers me growing up. With changelings, they notice. Because they’re not right.”

  “I suggest a conversation with your mum might move to the top of the to do list,” said Ward.

  “Yes. Wherever she is. Again.”

  Someone knocked on the bedroom door. “Hello?”

  “Stella?”

  Her sister came in. She said, “As if we hadn’t had enough excitement, Cappella is at the door. We are wanted in the church.”

  Luna

  Luna sat in a pew, holding Sam’s hand, with Moth lying at their feet like a stone dog on a tomb. The old oak door creaked as her sisters filed in, with Bella, with Ward. Seven people were now in Hornmoon church, and one ghost. And the stars of the sky.

  Luna felt very shy. She had seen them before, but never altogether, and there were a lot of them. She tried to count them but it was like counting the yews in the churchyard, a different number each time. There was Arcturus, jasper in her red-gold hair and a stem of plantain in her hand. A woman with a frond of succory smiled at Luna and Luna recognised the woman whom she had sometimes seen sitting by her cradle, at night when the fretful baby could not sleep. Here was Antares, black-skinned and flashing eyed, with a skein of sardonyx beads across her brow, and Aphecca, also black and topaz-crowned. Algol’s diamonds sparked fire from the altar candles and the Pleiades clustered in a corner, whispering to one another. Procyon strolled by with a garland of buttercups. And in the centre of the ring that they were slowly forming, the comet stood, dreaming still.

  Stella nudged Luna.

  “That one, the one who looks a bit blue – that’s the one I rescued.”

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “I do now. I asked Capella and she said she’s called Nephele, but she couldn’t remember her own name, poor thing. But she’s starting to remember things again now. She’s been lost. There should be a piece of lapis in the gemstone box. And she carries speedwell.”

  Algol, resplendent in a gown of black and white, walked forwards and held up her hand for quiet. She gave the Pleiades a rather stern look, Luna thought. The stars all joined hands. Algol spoke a word, a hissing, fizzing word and the comet slowly opened his eyes. He smiled, and replied: it was a language like fire, crackling up into a blaze. Algol gave a bow. She spoke again and the conversation continued for a little while, formal and measured now, somehow like a dance, Luna thought. Then all the stars bowed, paying tribute to their visitor, and he held out his long fiery hands and laughed, delighted.

  To the family, Algol said, “The comet is here, our little brother has come. And with the greater cold that he brings from deep space, he will seal the gateways to the Winter Kingdom, the world of ice whose legacy your enemies have tried to steal, by right of their blood, which yet does not belong to it. We need to send him into it, for if he remains in this world too long, he will bring the cold and the world will die. He will go now, but do not follow him: you will die also. We will tell you when it is safe.” She turned to Luna. “All except you. We need you, Luna, to open the door for him.”

  “What?” Luna felt cold with panic. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “You do, Luna,” her mother’s voice said, not far away. “I gave you the key. It’s yours, now. Once it’s passed from the eldest to the youngest, the youngest must bear it.”

  Luna remembered the thing that her mother had given her, when they were in White Horse Country. She had forgotten, or perhaps the thing itself, hiding in plain sight, had made her forget. She fished into her pocket and pulled it out. The object, small and hard and round, lying in the palm of her hand, was a flute made of bone. It had five little holes, a narrow lip. She held it up to her mouth.

  “Do I blow it?”

  “Go on, Luna,” her mother urged.

  So Luna blew into the flute. At first she thought that nothing was happening, that the flute was blocked or that she had blown it the wrong way. But then a high, sweet note sang out, closer to birdsong than to a sound made by an instrument. Luna blew again, but she did not need to. The humming sound rang through the little church, making the air hazy and blurring the figures of the Behenian stars. Everything shimmered, shivering. Luna felt an electric pause, a suspension in the world, and deep inside her the baby stirred. The comet turned and walked back down the aisle, and out through the door. Luna followed, her fingers frozen to the little flute. The oaken door shut behind them with a crash. She looked down and saw Moth. The lurcher stared gravely up at her: I will not leave you.

  Outside, it was very cold and very still. The gravestones were rimed with frost and Luna thought she must be able to see every star in the sky. Apart from that, it was utter dark: no sign of the orange glow that was distant Bristol, or even the closer illumination from Bridgwater. The comet paused, waiting, and the temperature dropped still further. In her ear, a voice said,

  “I think he’s waiting for you, Luna.”

  It was her grandfather’s voice. She looked up to see a small blue spark. She and Moth were not alone out here after all and this gave her strength. She raised the flute to her lips and blew again.

  The note sang out. The lych path was suddenly very bright but across the hills, the sloping fields, Luna could see other paths, too: some fainter tracks, criss-crossing, and, running towards the Tor along the floor of the valley a great burning road that she thought must be the Michael-Mary line, the ley that is said to bisect southern England from West to East, from Cornwall to Walsingham. A patchwork country, stitched together by these old roads, the tracks and pathways. And along the lych path, stood a gateway: not t
he in-our-world entrance to the church, but a great dark door.

  Luna heard a tune in her head and she began to play. It was a simple tune, only a few notes, very faintly familiar. As she played it, she turned her head and looked up. Orion the Hunter, the Winter King, was striding over the ridge of the hill. When she looked back, a man was standing by the lych gate. He wore skins, black and white furs which covered his body, and at his belt hung a sword. A silver-white dog slunk around his knees and when it looked up its eyes blazed blue. Moth whined in greeting. The hunter smiled at the comet, gestured, “Come.”

  The comet’s attenuated figure gave a bow. He stepped forward as Luna repeated the little tune. The lych gate loomed ahead: winter’s king showed the comet through. Beyond, Luna had a glimpse of the dead kingdom: not White Horse Country, but the post-Ice Age wasteland of snow and wind-blasted scrub and icy pools. This, she knew, had been the land to which Tam and Dana had sought entry: was it where they had come from, perhaps? Or had they wanted to open its ways, to bring through the things that lived here into the world?

  Far away, there was a flash of spring. A green stag, running.

  Better it’s closed, Luna thought, and finished the tune with a flourish just as the comet closed the gate. She hoped Moth wouldn’t take off after the deer. She had a last glimpse of the comet, moving fast through the cold land, faster and faster, then the gate slammed soundlessly shut and the winter king, too, was gone, back to his rightful striding place in the sky.

  The oak door opened behind Luna.

  “Are you all right?” Sam’s voice was thin with worry.

  “Yes! Yes, I’m fine. See, Moth came with me.” She ran back down the church path, seeing from the corner of her eye the blue spark of her grandfather’s spirit sink down into the pyramid of his tomb, and took Sam’s hand. He drew her back into the church where her sisters were anxiously waiting.