The Wind of Southmore

by Ariel Dodson

  “So,” she said grimly, her gaze focusing steadily on a crack in the worn stone floor, “you’ve been dumped too.”

  It was so blunt, Alice almost wanted to laugh. She should have been hurt, she supposed, or offended, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter very much anymore. It had happened, and that was that. She had stepped into another world here, one which seemed very far away from her irresponsible father and his money-making schemes. This certainly didn’t happen every day – well, the dumping part did, she supposed. Rotten and selfish and mean – but unfortunately true. And yet – “I thought,” she responded, wth a wry smile, “that this sort of thing only happened in stories.”

  The other girl looked up then, her expression a strange mixture of suppressed pain and a fierce urge to laugh. Twins. The idea of it made her think of a pair of bookends. And yet, she was so obviously a different person. And she was real. A small smile rose to her lips, and the other girl laughed, a strange, ringing sound in the great stone room.

  And the gull, watching outside the window, nodded its head sharply once, and departed quickly, winging towards the sea.

  “I can’t believe you live in a castle,” Alice said excitedly, as Arlen led her around the old stone foundations. The building didn’t seem now to be the wonder she had thought it the previous night; as Aunt Maud had advised, it was indeed in a sad state of disrepair. The heavy grey stone walls were badly chipped and worn, and one whole half of the castle, mostly the wing which would have looked out over the ocean, had been destroyed. The villagers claimed it was the force of the huge waves constantly pounding against the walls throughout the centuries, but Arlen believed that something more had occurred.

  “The strange thing,” she told Alice, as the two clambered over fallen trees and blocks of stone, “is that there are burn marks all around the outside, near the rocks on the beach. To me, it looks as though there had been a violent battle, and that someone had deliberately tried to set fire to it. But nobody will admit it. I don’t care,” she crushed a stick into the damp, wet sand beneath her trainer. It sank, but did not break. “There’s proof, whatever they say.” She closed her eyes, trying to forget the phantom twin, her haunted eyes pleading in the moonlight.

  “What proof?” Alice asked, curiously.

  “Something happened here,” Arlen replied. “It seems to hang over the place – in the air, and the wind – and that sea,” she added with a shudder. “I’ve spent hours in the library looking, but I think that anything there may have been destroyed.”

  “Anything like what?” Alice persisted. “What are you looking for?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Arlen pulled herself together suddenly with a short laugh. “I forgot you didn’t know anything about the village. I’ve had to suss it together from bits and pieces I’ve overheard people talking about, mostly. I think it started with the alchemist.”

  “Alchemist?” Alice wrinkled her forehead. “You mean like – trying to make gold and that sort of thing?”

  “Yes,” Arlen nodded. “Our family has owned this castle forever, and he was one of them, centuries and centuries ago. They say he barely used to leave his room, he was so busy working. I think the villagers were afraid of him. I found a torn fragment of writing once, hidden in one of the books in the library. It was made of a funny material, like a very smooth, soft leather.”

  “Probably vellum,” Alice suggested knowledgeably, remembering a medieval history lesson at school. It all seemed so long ago.

  “Perhaps,” Arlen shrugged. “Whatever it was, I could make out something about hiding a stone, and about the village – staying silent, I think it was. I’m not sure. The writing was so old it was hard to understand, and some of the letters didn’t seem to be in the right places.”

  “They used to do things like that,” Alice offered. “What sort of stone?”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Arlen answered. “He may have worked on different things. There was a ruby, I know that much.” She stopped then, and when she spoke again her voice was low. “I found an old portrait once – it must have dated from hundreds of years ago. I remember it was very faded and waterstained, and it had strange tear marks in the canvas. I think it had been buried in the sand and the soil for years, in the ruins of the alchemist’s tower. That’s where his room used to be.” She pointed to the part of the castle that directly faced the sea. The tower was no longer there, having fallen into the water centuries ago, perhaps the victim of the mysterious fire. All that remained was a crumbling outer wall, and some skeletal box shapes, which at one point must have been inhabited rooms. From the entrance of an old stone archway, a narrow curved staircase, not unlike the one leading to the girls’ own tower room, led to nowhere, an end step perched on the brink of the sea. Alice could hear the waves below, pounding against the rocks, and she shivered. It was all very creepy.

  “I was exploring there one day,” Arlen continued, “and I saw the frame sticking up out of the sand. When I uncovered it, I found a picture of a very old man with a long white beard, and a strange sort of square cap on his head. He was wearing long black robes, and in his right hand he held a large red ruby, which he seemed to be examining. I remember his eyes –they looked kind, but so sad, and I wondered why.” She paused, the ancient picture clear again before her. “But when I took it to show Aunt Maud she told me off for scrabbling about there – said it was dangerous and I could have been struck by falling masonry and wasn’t to go there again. And then the picture disappeared.” She stopped and looked towards the sea. “There’s a standing stone further up the road, towards the village,” she said softly. “It’s called Alchemist’s Block. After him. But I don’t know why.”

  “And what about the picture?” Alice asked.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen it since. I don’t know what Aunt Maud did with it. But I have seen the ruby,” she added in a low voice, so low that Alice could not make out what she had said, and she felt a sudden chill crawl up her spine. She shivered, and changed the subject.

  “You mentioned something about proof,” she said. “What is it? Can I see it?”

  But her twin’s face suddenly took on a frightened, almost haunted expression, and her eyes grew large and dark. “No,” she said sharply. “Not to the beach. I don’t want to go to the beach.” She could not forget the black, churning waters of the night before, the pale limb slicing through them like a knife.

  “Why – ” Alice began, but her sister’s face stilled her. She said no more, but gazed curiously at Arlen from time to time. They were walking down the old Beach Road, and Alice couldn’t help but notice that Arlen was keeping as far away from the beach side of it as possible.

  No one was around and nothing stirred, save for the haunting, chilling wail of the wind sweeping past them and rustling their hair around their faces, as it played amongst the fronds of rushes on the sides of the rough path. No presence disturbed them, except for the strong odour of the ocean, an omnipotent, powerful smell, which almost dizzied the girls’ senses.

  “You know,” after her strange experience the previous night, Alice considered the all too obvious absence now as rather strange, “I haven’t seen one seagull here all day. Isn’t that odd? Especially at a beach. And there were so many of them last night, too.”

  Arlen had started at the mention of the absence of birds, but Alice’s following sentence drew all colour from her face. “What do you mean, there were so many of them last night?” she asked, her voice tense and anxious.

  “Well,” and Alice explained about her strange desertion at the lonely station, and the thick swarm of watching birds, and the strange voice, which she wasn’t sure had come from the mysterious cart driver whom nobody seemed to know about. Arlen’s expression grew more and more strained as she listened, until Alice stopped, afraid that the girl was going to keel over into the sodden, sucking sand below.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.

  “He was right,” Arlen murmured in a whisp
er. “I don’t know how he knew.”

  “Who knew?” Alice was growing panicky. “What is it?”

  Arlen turned to face her, her hand flying protectively to the sparkling mark that rested against her throat.

  “I can’t understand how they all knew you were coming.”

  “What is this place?” Alice asked suddenly, and her voice was low.

  “A place very far away from anywhere else,” Arlen replied, almost to herself. She was leaning her head against the cool block of stone, its surface strangely smooth after many centuries of torment by wind and water. “This is Alchemist’s Block,” she offered then.

  “Our alchemist?” Alice asked. She liked the idea – it was all rather like being in a story.

  “Yes,” Arlen nodded, and frowned. “There’s something strange about it all, some mystery about it. I heard some of the village women talking once, when I was younger. I was in the sweet shop, and they were having tea at one of the tables and gossiping, like they do. They didn’t see me come in and, as everybody here shuts up the instant I come into view, I ducked behind one of the counters and listened.” She laughed suddenly, and the sound was strangely hollow. “It sounds awful, doesn’t it? But there’s not much else to do in a place like this.

  “They were talking about the sea – it had been very wild, but that’s not unusual. They’re all afraid of it here – we are, I mean – it’s a frightening sea – as if it has a mind of its own.” She paused, as the endless rush of the water before them seemed to roar in agreement. “They mentioned something about the rock – it wasn’t long after I’d seen the picture, and I couldn’t help but listen. But then Mrs Trulyn – she owns the shop – caught me lurking, and hustled me outside before I could hear anything else.”

  She stopped, uncertain of how to continue. It was the first time she had had somebody to talk to who was actually prepared to listen to her about these things. Aunt Maud was no use, and somehow with Mr MacKenzie, the subject had a strange habit of hiding itself beneath distractions. She had really been left to puzzle everything out in her own mind, and it was an odd luxury to finally be able to assess the situation with a listener who seemed as eagerly interested as she, and was as importantly involved. She couldn’t help but wonder how strange everything must seem to someone who had been brought up outside of Southmore, someone who was used to bright lights and television and the cynicism of the city. The words tumbled over anxiously in her mind, and she struggled to control them and select the right ones.

  “But I heard enough before she threw me out,” she said, slowly. “They blamed him. The alchemist. They said something about it not having been this way before – about it being his fault, his responsibility. Maybe that’s why they hate me so much,” she added, as an afterthought. “Perhaps they see me – us – as being just as guilty, because we’re his descendants.”

  “Whenabouts was all this?” Alice asked suddenly. Her head was swimming. Arlen was right. Southmore and its odd goings-on certainly seemed very far away from anywhere else, and particularly far away from the lights and crowds and life of London.

  “I’m not sure,” Arlen frowned. “Somewhere in the fifteenth century, I guess. At least, the clothes in the portrait looked similar to some of the fifteenth century clothes in one of the books in the library.” She stopped, and ran her hand lightly over the smooth stone surface. “A long time ago.”

  “Yes,” Alice agreed. A thought struck her suddenly. “Do they have any local history books in the library? That might tell you something. Or the internet?”

  “Oh, there’s no village library,” Arlen said, with a surprised glance. “Just our library at the castle. But there’s nothing about Southmore or the alchemist there. I’ve read just about everything in it.” She sighed, and looked puzzled. “What’s an internet?”

  “It’s – ” Alice thought and stopped, unsure of how to explain the modern world to someone from this strange little remnant of the past that was Southmore. She gave up. “Never mind. Nothing in your own library? You would have thought, of all places – ”

  “I know.”

  The pair were quiet for a few minutes, Arlen once again rerunning the mental catalogue of events she had built up from the patchy information found, and Alice wondering that places like this still existed in the twenty first century. She shivered, suddenly very aware that she didn’t like Southmore very much. “It’s very cold,” she said.

  “It is,” Arlen answered, and turned. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Silently, the twins left the stone and began the trek into the village. A passerby would not have imagined the strength of thoughts teeming through each girl’s brain. As they turned into one of the cobbled streets, Mrs Penmullen suddenly appeared at her door, shaking a rug vehemently. When she saw them, she stopped short at the pair of lookalikes standing before her. Arlen almost grinned, expecting a large reaction. Mrs Penmullen was noted throughout the village for having the largest nose and the widest mouth in the place, and this fresh and exciting piece of gossip would just about make her day. But to her surprise, the woman merely cast a quick look at the two and said shortly, “Well, I see you’ve come then, girl.” And with that, she dropped the rug on the ground, quickly stepped inside, and locked and bolted her door.

  Arlen stared, speechless.

  “Come on,” Alice pulled at her arm. “We might as well go home. She doesn’t seem very friendly.”

  “Well, I – ” Arlen was still struck by the strange behaviour of the loud gossip. But before she could offer a comment they passed Mr Allen washing his dog in a tub in his front yard. When he saw them, he smartly upset the tub, grabbed at the dog, and tripped into the house. Both girls heard the sharp turn of a key. They gazed at each other, dumbfounded.

  Everywhere they went that afternoon, doors were bolted, gates padlocked, and shutters and curtains drawn. Dogs barked menacingly as they passed, and some scuttled in fright from the twins’ path. It was not long before they were heading back out of the village; Alice, who was not used to walking so far, only pausing at the dragon fountain to catch her breath. Arlen was nervous, unable to forget her strange, mesmerising experience of the previous day. It was a reaction not lost on Alice, but she did not comment, instead turning her attention to the crumbling stone beast. “It’s just like the one above the castle door,” she said, “except that you can see even less of this one.”

  “It’s a Penmorven symbol,” Arlen said, fingering her pendant, which for some reason again seemed to be burning her skin. “It was supposed to protect – or something. I could never find out the full story – again.”

  “It’s not been looked after very well,” Alice remarked. “It’s such a shame. It looks so old, it should be under National Trust or something. Are you OK?”

  “Yes, I – it’s just my charm,” Arlen complained. “It’s irritating me.”

  “Let me see,” Alice raised herself. “It looks like proper gold. One of our landladies once bought me a gold bracelet as a present, but it went green after a week. It’s very pretty. Celtic looking.”

  “It was my mother’s,” Arlen said, in a low voice. “Our mother’s,” she corrected herself quickly, remembering. “She left it with me, when she dumped me. I always wear it, it’s usually OK.”

  “Maybe it’s the weather,” Alice offered, feeling that it was a stupid excuse, but something she had often heard people say. She wished that Arlen could tell her something else about their mother.

  “Maybe,” Arlen agreed, and laughed.

  Alice changed the subject. “I see what you mean about the people here,” she said, glancing back at the village as they turned towards the pier. It looked like any pretty postcard picture from the road. There was no one behind them, but she could still feel the hostile eyes of the villagers boring into their backs. “Do they always behave like that?”

  “Yes,” Arlen replied bluntly. “I don’t know, though. Did you hear what Mrs Penmullen said? It’s – it’s like they’ve been expectin
g – your arrival – and it scares the hell out of them.”

  “Like the birds,” Alice said quietly. “They knew. They’ve been watching. Where are we going?” She felt that she had seen enough of Southmore to last her a good long while. The barren streets, armed with padlocked doors and bolted windows and staring pairs of eyes behind white lace curtains, was more than she felt able to bear. If that wasn’t enough, the mist was beginning to rise from the sea, filling the air with a strange sulphuric tinge that seemed to weigh upon her like lead. She wished she were back in London, back in school, anywhere but here.

  “I want to see Mr MacKenzie,” Arlen answered. “We buy our fish from him – he’s my only real friend here. I want to ask him what he knows.”

  “But – will he act the same way as the others?” Alice asked, remembering fondly how in London no one took any notice of anyone else.

  “Not usually,” Arlen replied, and stopped, doubt starting to crawl over her with clammy fingers. Everything was so weird lately. She took a deep breath and stared at the plain of white sand before her, flanked by the churning, turning waves. She sighed. “But now there are two of us. He can’t ignore that. Come on.”

  Unhappily, Alice nodded, holding her breath lightly as she followed Arlen through the narrow streets and onto the pier, where an old, white haired man was visible, alone except for the shoals of fish and the seagulls, so many seagulls milling around him that the sound of their beating wings filled the air like thunder. Arlen stood, stunned. She had never seen anything like that before. Never so many, and never – attacking. The word flew into her mind with a chill, her whole body prickling cold as she realised that they weren’t attacking the fish – they were attacking him.