by Tim Lebbon
“Leave how?” Scott asked. But already he was starting to feel a sense of dread.
“I’ll sort that out. Just keep up with me.” Nina was looking around with more than interest, and that worried Scott as well. Here he was in Cardiff, surrounded suddenly by a world he did not know, following a woman who seemed to be immortal, to meet another immortal who might be able to save him now that he’d been touched by death. . . .
“I think I believe all this,” he said. Nina glanced back, offering only a quirky frown. “I shouldn’t, but I do. Papa would have loved this, Nina.”
She stopped and looked back at him again. This time the frown was replaced by a smile. “He did,” she said. “He really did.”
Papa sits on a rock beside the stream while Scott wades into the water. He’s wearing his new trainers and socks, and his mother will be mad when he goes home with them soaked. He purposely hasn’t turned around in at least ten minutes, scared that he will attract Papa’s attention to what he is doing. But really, Scott knows that he knows. Papa, as his father so often says when the old man is not present, lets Scott get away with murder.
He wades out farther, catching his breath as he slips on a mossy stone. Something darts past his leg and disappears beneath a spread of stream glaring with sunlight. Stickleback? Scott’s not sure, but he’d love to catch one. He’d put it back afterward, of course. But he really needs to catch one.
“That’s far enough,” Papa says.
“It’s not deep.”
“Not there, no. But farther out it is. That’s far enough, Scott.”
The memory usually ends here, segueing into an evening spent raking grass cuttings and helping his father trim a tree at the bottom of the garden. Usually. But this time the memory remains, and it’s as fresh as if it is happening right now.
Scott takes another step forward in the stream. He’s not sure why; he usually does what Papa says, because he knows how much freedom the old man gives him.
His foot comes down and hovers over nothing.
“Scott!” Papa’s voice is thunder, shattering the tranquillity of the scene and darkening the sun. “Get back!”
Scott turns to see why his grandfather is so angry, and he starts to dip backward into the stream. For a few seconds he balances there, two possibilities juggling and jousting to decide which path he will travel down next. The safer of the two wins. He finds his feet again and picks his way back across the stream, reaching the bank and his red-faced Papa.
“Sorry,” he says quietly, but already Papa is calming down. His hand shakes as he touches the back of Scott’s neck and pulls him in for a hug.
“Death’s always so close, Scotty. People have drowned in that stream.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” And for the briefest of moments, Scott senses that it’s not only him Papa is talking to.
They walk home across a field, and Papa has a smile on his face. Scott darts here and there, picking dandelions, kicking molehills, trying to balance on the crusts of old cow patties without sinking through. He glances at Papa now and then, aware that the old man is in some other zone, enjoying being in this field in a completely different way from Scott. It’s as if he is somewhere else entirely, and his face shows his joy at being there.
“In here,” Nina said. “Sit down.”
“Why are you nervous?”
Nina sat beside him, her back against the tree. “I don’t want to be seen.”
“By Lewis?”
“Maybe. I’m not as certain of his capabilities as I once was. It’s almost as if he’s getting help.”
“Who would help him?”
Nina shrugged. “But I have to help you right now. That’s the priority. That’s the only thing we can concentrate on so that—”
“Helen is the only thing I’m concentrating on here,” Scott said. “Why can’t you just go and find her? Why can’t you take me with you, and we’ll both go?”
“The Wide is endless, Scott. She could be anywhere. Anywhere.”
“She’s not on your mind, is she? She’s not important to you at all.”
“She is. She is. Because she’s important to you.”
Scott rested his head back against the tree and looked up into the branches. It was a relief to be able to look somewhere where there were no ghosts. If he glanced around where he was sitting he could see none, but he could feel them everywhere. If he looked carefully, he was sure they would reveal themselves. In the tree’s canopy birds chirped and hopped invisibly from branch to branch. A small spider lowered before him, spinning on its invisible line of silk. He reached out and touched the line, moving it left and right and setting the spider swaying.
“What are you doing?” Nina asked.
“Trying to find a moment’s peace.”
“Believe me, true peace is not easy.”
He let the spider go and it crawled quickly back up into the tree. “You’ve had enough time to look for it.”
“The longer you have, the more elusive it becomes. That’s why . . .” She trailed off.
“That’s why you want to know how to die.”
Nina nodded. “Partly.”
“What is there after death, if you don’t become one of those lost souls?” He waved his hand, though there were no ghosts in sight.
“The other side of the Wide.”
“And what’s there?”
“That’s what I want to find out.”
Scott sighed. “So whatever you’re going to do, let’s do it.”
Nina edged herself closer to him, their legs touching. She was surprisingly warm. She’s no ghost, he thought. But he began to wonder. If she truly was immortal, then perhaps she was some kind of ghost, a soul trapped in her own body instead of set free to wander or repeat the moment of its death. Maybe there was a lot more to being a ghost than simply being lost. Maybe it had a lot to do with being damned.
“You damned yourself,” Scott said.
Nina looked at him, surprised. “No.”
“You look damned. You feel damned, don’t you?”
She glanced past him into the infinity between drooping branches. She was silent for some time. “No,” she said at last. “I don’t feel damned. I feel blessed. But I’m not able to accept the blessing, or use it as it should be used.”
“Are any of the other immortals able to do that?”
“That’s a difficult one.” She picked a blade of grass and rolled it between her fingers. Picked another blade, tied it around the first. She concentrated hard, then cast them aside. “Old Man has achieved a lot,” she said. “You’ll see that soon. But even he doesn’t use his immortality as he could.”
“Now I’m worried.”
“Don’t be. He’s harmless.”
“I’m not sure whether or not you’re being ironic.”
Nina smiled fleetingly. “Right. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, and you have to listen to me. Listen to me, Scott. The Wide is the path from life to what lies after. For those lost souls—the ones who can’t even find the start of the path—it’s endless, and has no direction. We’re going to skirt the very edge of the Wide. But you have to hold on to me. I can find my way through, but you’re going to be lost. Hold on to me, Scott. If you don’t—if you let go, and I lose you—then you’ll be lost in there forever.”
“Helen is in there?”
“Don’t think about that. Don’t even consider going to find her, because you never will. Imagine dropping a penny into the Atlantic, then taking a snorkel to go and look for it. It can never be found, and you don’t have the right equipment to look.”
“And you have the right equipment? The knowledge?”
“I’ve learned a few small facts about the Wide since I’ve been alive.”
Scott stood and his knees clicked. Getting old, he thought. And here I am, about to get a preview of what is yet to come.
“But you’ll help me find Helen. Once we’ve got the book, you’ll help me get he
r back from Lewis. Right?”
“Maybe even before then.”
“How?”
“Lewis will be following us every step of the way.”
Following us. Scott shivered. It’s almost as if he’s getting help, Nina had said.
“Now come and sit back down with me,” Nina said. “We’ll link arms.”
Scott sat so that his good arm was linked through Nina’s. Not my dead arm. I won’t link that one with hers. It could come off. He felt a moment of intense giddiness, and the whole world seemed to tip in an attempt to throw him off. Initially he thought it was Nina taking them into the Wide, but then he felt her hands on his face, smelled the spicy mystery of her breath as she brought her face close to his, and he heard her shout as a whisper.
“Scott, hold on. Fight it!”
Fight what? he thought. But then he knew. He felt something vast and endless opening up around him, and it was the draw of the Wide.
“Not yet, Scott!”
Sound and smell returned slowly, and Nina’s voice grew louder.
“That’s good, that’s good. Damn it!” It was her curse more than anything that brought him around. She lost control for a moment, and that scared Scott out of his dance with unconsciousness.
“Nina . . .”
“It’s not your time yet, Scott. Come on. Sit up again, hold me, and we’ll go to see Old Man. It’s been a long time.” She hauled him up beside her, sitting with his back against the tree, and she linked her arm tightly through his.
He still felt dizzy and hazy, but even through that he found time to wonder what a long time was to an immortal.
“Don’t hold your breath,” she said. “You can breathe out there. And remember, you’re not one of them. You’re alive, Scott. You need yourself.”
“Need myself?”
“You’ll see. Here we go.” Nina muttered a few words that rose and fell with a singsong lilt. Her voice became deep—almost subaudible—and the phrases so obviously held power. Scott sensed them rumbling in his chest, tickling his heart and the deeper parts of him, and he felt as though he were acting as a tuning fork for the phrase she sang again and again.
He sensed it in the distance first, places he could not see dozens or hundreds of miles away blinking from existence. The line where reality and unreality blurred closed in quickly, like reverse ripples on the pond of time. The surface was the world he inhabited, and below the surface lay the whole rounded truth of reality. And it had such hidden depths.
Cardiff began to fade. Fields and streets, homes and factories, hospitals and schools and parks, they all flickered away to nothing. He could still see through the trees to the park around them, and in the distance the castle stood defiantly, a huge, ancient edifice that could surely never be humbled or changed. He could also see several shapes wandering across the park, but from beneath the copse of trees he could not make out whether they were people or ghosts, or both.
“Almost there,” Nina whispered, and she clasped Scott’s arm so tightly with hers that it began to hurt.
The distant sky began to change. It wavered with heat haze, then lost its pale colors. Gray or white, Scott could not tell, but perspective was leached away. The haze came closer. No sound accompanied it. Reality was being purged silently and with no fanfare, and the only sound that accompanied the sight of the castle, park, and trees disappearing into a glare of nothingness was Scott’s scream.
He closed his eyes. That was the only reaction he could offer. Time and space opened up around him, pulling away with frightening velocity. It was as if everything he knew and understood had expanded from nothing to the size of the universe in the blink of an eye, a big bang of personal proportions that would utterly steal away his personality if he allowed it. He was less than a speck of dust under the gaze of the universe, so insignificant that the irrelevance of his life and looming death took his breath away.
You need yourself, she had said. And she was right. Under the impression of all that was around and within, if he lost himself, then there was nothing. And no sane mind could stand that.
The endlessness of life, death, and time stretched around him, and he kept his eyes closed because it terrified him. He was conscious only of the turmoil in his mind, and the feeling of Nina’s arm holding him tight.
There was no sense of movement. No time passed, and though he was breathing light and fast, there was no impression that these breaths carried him from moment to moment. He could be here forever, and he wondered how madness would work with no time to permit its growth.
The reality of infinity abandoned him. He sat down with a bump. His eyes opened and a brief flash of pain blossomed behind them.
“Shit!” He gasped. And that grounded him. He had been through something mindless and terrifying, and his first reaction upon emerging from the other side was to curse. No expression of wonder or amazement or disbelief . . . just a curse.
“Indeed,” Nina said. “That’s usually my reaction.”
Scott moved his arm slightly, and when Nina lifted her own he knew it was safe for them to part. He massaged his shoulder, glad that the pain was rapidly fading. “That place was . . .” He could not finish.
“The Wide,” Nina said. And that said it all.
Their immediate reality crashed in then, and it was only as it appeared around them that Scott registered its brief absence. A pale mist of nothing was replaced by cool concrete slabs beneath them, a building at their back, railings before them supporting a mass of rampant shrubs, and a road grew into the distance, spotted with parked cars and crossed here and there by dogs or foxes. It was nighttime, and something howled.
It had been daytime in Cardiff.
The howl was answered from closer by. Something flapped around his head, and just as he began to panic a sound screamed in from his right. The motorcycle roared past along the street, Dopplering into the distance and carrying a splash of light with it.
“Holy shit, I thought we were somewhere else,” Scott said. “I thought . . . the howls . . .”
“Dogs,” Nina said. She listened. “Scottish dogs, I think.”
“You’re joking with me?”
She nudged his arm and laughed. “We’re here! I’m just pleased, that’s all. You kept your eyes closed through there, but I find I never can. It’s always good to come back.”
“It was daylight when we left Cardiff.”
“And now we’re in Edinburgh, and it’s nighttime.”
“It feels like seconds.”
“The Wide’s weird with time. Who knows? We might have come out a century in the future.”
Scott’s eyes went wide and he looked around. “That motorbike looked pretty normal. And—”
“I’m fucking with you, Scott.” Nina held his left hand, helping him stand from the cold ground.
Scott brushed himself off and looked around. The row of buildings behind them was three stories high, town houses each displaying bed-and-breakfast signs. Most of them had vacancies. There were lights on at a couple of windows, but no other sign of activity.
It was dark and overcast, no moon or stars. Street-lights were off, so it must have been in the early hours, but when Scott turned around and looked past the overgrown railings, his jaw dropped.
Edinburgh Castle stood before them, high and majestic on its volcanic foundation. It was illuminated from all sides, and the cliffs below were in darkness, making it appear as though the castle floated a hundred feet up in the sky. It was stunning and humbling, and Scott was profoundly grateful that a human construct still had the power to astound after what he had just been through. He would hate to find his sense of wonder stolen away by the Wide.
“Very pretty,” Nina said quietly. “Old stone, new light. They go well together. I wonder what it would have looked like five hundred years ago.”
“Didn’t you see it back then?”
“No. I haven’t been to see Old Man in a long time.”
“Is he close?”
�
��Hopefully. He’s not the sort to move around.” She was staring dreamily at the castle, and Scott saw its decorative lights reflected in her eyes.
“So let’s go,” he said.
Nina turned, her expression unreadable. “Scott, you know he’s going to be very strange to you, don’t you?”
“Stranger than you?”
She blinked, as though trying to decide whether or not he was joking.
“You told me you collect the hearts of dead things.”
She nodded. “But Old Man . . . he doesn’t move around. Doesn’t interact with people. He studies. Practices. Experiments.”
“What with?”
“Life and death. That’s why we’re here, with you balancing between the two.” She waved her hand. “Just be warned. He’s not with the times like I am.”
“With the times,” he repeated, and laughed. But it was a bitter sound, humorless, because his wife was still missing. “I need to be fixed,” he said, and the tears came then. “I need to be made better so I can find her. Will he do that for me? Can he?”
“We’ll see. Follow me.” Nina touched him on the shoulder, a brief expression of support, and then crossed the road. Scott followed.
They walked along the railing until Nina found a gate buried beneath a fall of shrubs. She lifted the plants away and pulled at the gate. Its hinges squealed as it opened, and Scott thought of The Secret Garden and all those other children’s books where the characters found another reality and entered into a world-changing adventure. On this side of the fence was a quiet Edinburgh road, home to sleeping tourists and dogs that wandered the streets at night. On the other side, just what would they find?
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Old Man,” Nina said. “He probably knows we’re here already. We’ll know soon enough whether or not . . . Ahh, there we are.” She stepped through the gate and motioned Scott to follow. When he pushed past the reaching fronds of unknown plants she pointed, and he saw.
On the sheer slopes below the stark face of Edinburgh Castle, a strange light glowed. It was not yellow or white, but gray, reminiscent of the blankness of the Wide.
