Prospero's Children

by Jan Siegel

  In the morning, there was still no sign of Ragginbone. Will went into the garden before breakfast, calling for Lougarry, but she did not come. An air of unease hung over the house, unsettling even Mrs. Wicklow, who had arrived early for a projected shopping expedition to the supermarket in Guisborough. “There’s been strange goings-on,” she said, “since that flood business. People seeing things that didn’t ought to be there. Of course, boys get worked up, over-excited, and then they imagine anything, from beasties to boggarts, but Mr. Snell, he’s not the type to go seeing things.”

  “Who’s Mr. Snell?” asked Fern, and “What did he see?” from Will.

  “He lives just up t’ road from us,” Mrs. Wicklow explained. “Walks his dog every evening, down t’ beach if it’s fine. He come by yesterday on his way back when we was in t’ garden: he was in a right pother, pale as dough, and the dog shivering and yapping away. Mind you, it’s a nasty little creature: once bit a child. We asked him what was t’ trouble and he said he’d seen something on t’ beach. Wouldn’t say what it was. Well, we thought it was all just boys’ stories, but Mr. Snell . . .”

  Fern and Will abandoned breakfast, murmured a passing excuse to their father, and headed for the sea. The beach was popular in summer but recent bad weather had kept tourists to a minimum. As they walked, a thin veil of cloud drew over the sun and the wind turned chill. Down on the shore, the dull light washed everything with gray; a solitary beachcomber picked his way along the waterline, but there was no one else around. The Capels left their shoes by the steps and wandered down to where the foam-swirl poured over low rocks and fanned across the sand-flats. They paddled through the ebb and flow of the waves, searching with their eyes for anything unusual or alarming; once, Will flinched from a thick strand of weed that looked, for a moment, like the tip of a tentacle. Passing the beachcomber with a brief “hello” they soon found themselves alone. The mouth of the Yarrow was a long way behind; ahead, sea and shore drew together, squeezing the beach against the crumbling cliff of rock and impacted mud. And across the sand, there were tracks. Fern and Will bent over them, initially more baffled than afraid. They saw pronounced indentations running in two parallel bands, up the beach toward the cliff: the distance between the most widely spaced marks was more than three feet. Gradually a picture formed in their minds. It was a picture with few specific features but it included a great many legs, spiky, single-clawed legs that all scuttled in unison, like a cross between a lobster and a woodlouse. Only bigger. Much bigger.

  The rising tide sent a wave sprawling up the beach which spread itself thinly across the sand, eroding the imprints to dimples. “We haven’t got long,” said Fern. “We could get cut off here.”

  But Will was already following the tracks to where they vanished under a large boulder. He dropped to his knees; coming up behind, Fern saw him peering into a hole beneath the stone. It had obviously been silted up but something had scrabbled away at the entrance, clearing an opening that was low but broad enough to swallow the tracks, a narrow crack into utter blackness. Will said with a marked fall in enthusiasm: “I suppose I could try to crawl in . . .”

  “No,” Fern said, rather more firmly than was strictly necessary.

  She seized a handful of his T-shirt to emphasize her point. He did not attempt to break free, only sinking down to sand level, keeping a short distance from the slot. Then she felt the T-shirt pull as he inched closer.

  “Will—!”

  “I just want to take a look . . .”

  A second later he shot backward, almost knocking her over.

  “It’s in there,” he gasped, “whatever it is. I saw—eyes. Moving about. Only they weren’t synchronized. They moved separately, like—like two eyeballs, just floating around in the dark. What do you think—?”

  “On stalks?” Fern suggested.

  “It’s from Atlantis, isn’t it?”

  “I think we should get away. Now—”

  The claw shot out so fast that if Will hadn’t already begun to reverse he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Even in that one brief appearance they registered every detail. It resembled the pincers of a gigantic crab, huge chunks of armor-plating with the ragged edge of a badly sharpened saw. The ancient shell was crusted with barnacles and coral-polyps, weed-smeared and sea-stained. But it moved as if it had been oiled, and the snap of those pincers closing had the iron impact of a guillotine. Will’s leg was within millimeters of being sliced in half—but even as Fern yanked him backward the claw withdrew, disappearing into the dark beneath the rock.

  Will swore.

  His sister did not bother to admonish him. “Come on,” she said, maintaining her grip on his T-shirt.

  “But—supposing someone else finds it?”

  “They won’t. The tide’s coming in. It’ll go with the tide.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  They did not slacken their pace until they had retrieved their shoes and were walking up the road to the village. Will stopped at the vicarage to consult Gus’s ample library for any background information on primitive crustaceans. Fern returned home to find the house empty and a note on the kitchen table telling her Robin and Mrs. Wicklow had gone to Guisborough. She prepared coffee and toast to make up for the breakfast she had missed and then allowed the one to go cold, the other soggy, while she lost herself in fruitless speculation. Dale House felt curiously bleak deprived of the goblin’s furtive presence and the solitude began to be oppressive. When she heard a car on the drive, she started up without thinking and ran to open the door.

  But it wasn’t her father’s Audi which had pulled up outside. This car was long, and low, and gleaming white. The driver unfolded himself from the front seat with pantheresque grace and came toward her, the familiar knowing smile shadowing his mouth. His hair shone like a steel helmet. Fern drew back into the hall, starting to close the door, but slowly, too slowly. She knew he was an ambulant, a manifestation of Azmordis, oldest of spirits, all-powerful and all-hungry—but he was also a social acquaintance, her father’s friend, and the lifelong habit of courtesy made her hesitate.

  “Are you going to let me in,” he said, “or shut the door in my face?”

  And of course she could not. Even now, knowing what she knew, she had to play the game, fulfill the demands of good manners. “I beg your pardon,” she said. And: “Was I expecting you?”

  “Oh, I think so,” he responded, stepping over the threshold. She wasn’t sure if he closed the door or if it closed itself after him, the Yale lock sliding into place with a soft terminal snick. “I told your father I would be around one day. Where is he, by the way?”

  “He’s out,” Fern said reluctantly. “He’ll be back soon”— and as she spoke she realized that somehow Javier knew she was alone, had known before he came, choosing his moment, relying on her weakness and the reflexes instilled by her polite middle-class upbringing.

  She thought: Etiquette can be lethal . . .

  “You might offer me coffee,” he suggested. She was conscious of how tall he was, and felt even smaller than usual.

  “I might,” she said, “but it’s gone cold.”

  “Heat it up.”

  He followed her into the kitchen. She put the coffeepot on the hob and waited, resenting her passive role, striving to conceal both tension and fear. The next move had to be his. She had found the key, and lost it; she had summoned his presence into the idol, and it had been destroyed; she had tried to prevent Alimond opening the Door, and had failed. Now, every move had to be his.

  “What happened to Alison?” he asked.

  “You must know. She made an image of the Gate, and unlocked it, but it wasn’t what she expected. It wasn’t the Gate of Death. It was a Door into—somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Atlantis.” She could think of no good reason to withhold the information. “Zohrâne opened the Door there, and Alimond opened the Door here, and they found—each other.”

  “Y
ou were present?” queried Javier.

  “I watched. I wanted to stop her, but I couldn’t break through. The circle was too strong.”

  “So how did she drown? She did drown, didn’t she?”

  “Oh yes.” Fern shivered, maybe at the recollection, maybe at the proximity of Javier. “The Door opened on the End, the fall of Atlantis. The sea came through and we were swept away.”

  “Yet you survived . . .”

  “Luck, I suppose.”

  “In magic,” said Javier, “there is no such thing as luck. What became of the key?”

  “Guess.”

  She went to pour the coffee but he grasped her by the shoulder, swinging her round to face him. His gaze seemed to pass through her eyes, probing into her mind, seeking the weak spot, the pressure point, his mark. Riding on instinct, she thought: He mustn’t know it’s gone. Better to tell him the truth now, and then he won’t peer too close if you have to lie . . . She said: “They both had it. Zohrâne in the past, Alimond in the present. When the Door opened, the two keys were in one time zone, so they must have . . . fused. It was in Atlantis when the flood came. No one can get it now.”

  He released her with what might have been a sigh, his face blurring as the spirit behind it shifted its concentration. There was something almost obscene about that slackening of expression, as if the flesh had momentarily loosed its hold on his bone structure. A wave of unreality hit Fern. She clutched thankfully at the coffeepot, pouring with unsteady hands, finding relief in an ordinary action. When she turned to Javier again, his features were back in place. Normal service was resumed; over coffee, he made desultory remarks, mainly about Alison. Uncomfortable silences intervened.

  When he had finished he set down his cup with a curious deliberation, as if it were the tiny gesture that completed a ritual. Or initiated one. “By the way,” he said, “do you have my picture?” It might have been an afterthought, an extra detail of no particular significance. But it’s important, Fern concluded. He thinks it’s important, so it must be. All those questions about Alimond were just a preliminary, perhaps even a smokescreen. This is why he’s here. “You may remember it,” he went on. “I believe you admired it once. Lost City. A colored etching by Bellkush, rather unusual. It’s— quite—valuable.”

  He wants me to feel like a thief, she deduced. He thinks that will divert me from any dangerous speculation. But all he knows is that Alimond had the picture: he can’t be sure I have it . . . “I remember the one,” she said. “Why should it be here?”

  “Alison had—borrowed it,” he said. Fern caught the faint hesitation. “It was not at her apartment. And she never went anywhere without pictures; it was an idiosyncrasy of hers.”

  “I can’t recall seeing it,” Fern said, frowning as if in concentration.

  “Are you sure?”

  She didn’t see him move, but suddenly he was holding her wrist. The yellow pinpoints came and went in his eyes; his grip was like a manacle. This time, his gaze strove not to probe but to mesmerize, dulling her wits, draining her of self and certainty. His mouth curved into something that merely resembled a smile, devoid of all warmth. Thus he had smiled in the restaurant, when the walls had vanished, and the icy stars glittered above a barren heath . . .

  The kitchen grew darker. The ceiling seemed to be low overhead, the windows narrow. Where the hob had been there was an empty firepit, choked with a mess of cold ashes. Straw blew across the floor . . .

  And in the opposite corner, on a rumpled palliasse, two small shapes were huddled under a blanket. Shadows covered them. She did not want to look but she could not help it: she thought she could make out an arm—a child’s arm—crooked at an unnatural angle, the underside disfigured with what appeared to be black pustules. The shapes lay very still. The smell of death filled her lungs and turned to nausea in her stomach.

  There was a movement outside, the flicker of torches in the twilight. She knew there should be shouts but she could not hear them, only the hiss of flame eating at walls of wattle-and-daub, and the sudden crackle of burning thatch, and the scurrying feet of mice running to and fro, to and fro, finding no way out. She remembered Pegwillen, his playmates lost to the plague, the cottage razed. Insects were dropping out of the roof; the air was dim with smoke. The child’s arm twitched in the heat with a brief illusion of life.

  “Where is my painting?”

  And now all she could see was the eyes—Javier’s eyes, Azmordis’s eyes—bright with reflected fire. In the tiny recess of her brain that was still cold and clear she thought: Not yet. Don’t say anything yet. This is the past, it was over long ago, it isn’t real . . .

  He forced her wrist outward, thrusting her hand toward the flames.

  “Where is my painting?”

  “Rollo took it!” she gasped. “He took all Alison’s things. He must’ve taken it—”

  Her eyes were watering from the smoke; she hoped they weren’t actual tears. The blur of moisture temporarily blinded her. She was able to wrench herself free of his hold, and something clattered, and when she could see the fire was gone, and the cottage, and coffee was dripping down the oven door, and the metal pot clanged across the stone flags.

  “Dear me,” said Javier mildly. “You seem to have knocked over the coffeepot.”

  They went upstairs so he could see Alison’s room, and on the way down, simulating indifference, she watched him opening doors and peering into cupboards. The search was cursory; he was evidently convinced of her ignorance. His thumb-mark was still in her mind, numbing her power of resistance; he did not need to push too hard or probe too deep. A part of her still belonged to him, or so he thought. She hoped he was wrong.

  When Will got back, the white car was driving away.

  He found his sister sitting at the kitchen table, her chin on her hands. She was trembling slightly from reaction but her voice was steady enough.

  “Don’t worry, I’m all right. He wanted the painting. The one I kept.”

  “Did you give it back to him?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s his, isn’t it?” Fern did not answer. “What on earth have you done to the bread? It’s burned black.”

  “Is it?” she said. She felt suddenly weak. The loaf had been left next to the hob, close to the point where Javier had thrust her hand. It was a charred mass. “I—it was an accident—”

  Will was beside her, looking anxiously into her face. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Just,” she whispered. “Only just.”

  Lougarry arrived about half an hour later, nudging the back door open with her nose. She did not lie down in her accustomed place by the stove but stood in the midst of the floor, her tail on the twitch, fixing them with an insistent stare. Will was trying to describe some of the more improbable monsters he had encountered in Gus’s books, but he abandoned the subject, turning thankfully to the she-wolf. She did not respond to his welcome, merely waiting. The twitch of her tail might have indicated impatience.

  “She wants us to go with her,” he said.

  “About time,” said Fern.

  Lougarry led them over the moors to the rocky height where they had met Ragginbone once before. They were very close before they could see him, the earth-and-stone colors of his coat melding him with his background. “Aren’t you warm?” Fern asked on impulse.

  He laughed, pushing back a heavy sleeve to reveal an arm all bone and sinew, knotted and gnarled like the limb of a veteran oak, jutting veins twining muscles petrified rather than softened with age. “I rarely feel either heat or cold,” he said. “There’s little enough flesh left on me for that. The temperature has to get to extremes before I sweat or shiver. In any case I find, with longevity, that I’ve grown to disregard such things. I weather the seasons like a tree or a stone, drawing closer to nature’s more durable features, becoming that which I resemble. Fleshly vulnerability would be rather out-of-place in a man of my years.”

  They sat down with their backs to the
sun-warmed rock. As Will related recent events the Watcher’s face grew thin and hard with concentrated thought. “It’s Atlantis, isn’t it?” Will said. “It’s sort of leaking through into the present day. Because of what Alison did.”

  “It’s the sea,” said Ragginbone. “The ocean is an entity with a spirit—a mind—of its own. Once it was untamed and free, its deeps uncharted, the breeding-place of mermaids and monsters, invariably hostile to the land-born mortals who sought to bestride it. But times changed. Men learned to ride out its tempests and harvest its wealth, and the sea grew accustomed to them, if still distrustful. With reason. We reaped where we did not sow, without gratitude or understanding. We probed into its inmost secrets, polluted its waters, devastated its creatures. And now . . . sea calls to sea. The boundaries of Time are broken: it can reach into the Forbidden Past and summon monsters to work its revenge.” He added, almost as an afterthought: “You are near the coast here. And rivers and streams, rainfall and dew, they are all part of the great Water which dominates the earth. It is a Mind which we alienate at our peril.”