‘And who is this?’ As a botanist he kept up his Latin, having excelled in the subject at Rotherweird School. Latin made the curriculum for its contribution to scientific treatise and linguistic logic, not for any doors it might open to the past, which were kept firmly shut. Salt, seeing nothing untoward, dismissed the words as a trick of the wind and hurried on.
He reached the extraordinary tree some twenty minutes later. It was large and squat in the bole, its two dominant bare upper branches stretched out, splay-fingered, like a haunting ghost in a child’s cartoon. Beneath the highest branch, on the forest side, a patch of sky disobeyed the laws of physics, blocking out the starlight, all a-shimmer, but dark as water in a deep well. Salt instinctively suspected a kinship between this phenomenon and the stones.
Moving closer, he tripped over an iron bar, encrusted with rust, with what looked like a scooped cup near the protruding end. He disengaged it from the grass, again getting that sense of a malignant presence. A jumbled Christian motif came to him: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Part of Lost Acre’s appeal had been its freedom from any moral compass, a place whose inhabitants lived by the laws of nature, a choiceless universe. But an iron bar required hands, a furnace, mined materials, a designing intelligence and a purpose. Only the corrosion gave comfort: the bar had been cast long ago.
Salt froze. A stop-start movement in the grass, following his route from the white tile, looked too measured for the wind, more like a creature of stealth, stalking him. He tested the bar as a defensive weapon, only for it to snap like a biscuit. He peered hard. The twitching shadowplay suggested a sizable animal, the speed and decisive line a good sense of smell or sharp sight, or both. Another Latin word hissed from the sward – nuntium habemus: we have a messenger.
Salt realised he would not outrun his pursuer and anyway, flight would suggest he saw himself as a victim – a sure way, he suspected, of becoming one – so better to make a positive gesture without obvious hostility. He shook the light to a fierce glow and held it aloft.
Neither quadruped nor biped, neither human nor weasel, the creature that stood up to face Salt presented an uncanny mix of the two: animal in the pinched snout, the fur, the pricked ears and the predatory teeth; human in the eyes, hands (other than the clawed nails), the intelligence of the gaze, the pinkish patches of skin between the russet hair and the rough leather clothing. It held a spear, well balanced for throwing as well as thrust.
Salt had often wondered how Lost Acre’s species, all of them hybrids, mixed and matched, and whether as a human he might be vulnerable to mutation. To those conundra he now added a new question: accident or design?
‘Sum Ferox,’ said the weaselman.
The creature’s composite nature might not have shocked Salt, but its use of classical Latin did. What had the human half been, to have that first language? All the same, a name well chosen, thought Salt. Even though the creature held the spear upright, more on guard than the offensive, the face could not have been more predatory.
‘Hayman Salt.’
To his amazement the weaselman shifted effortlessly into English. ‘We need help,’ said Ferox. ‘There will be great turbulence.’
‘Why?’
‘Saeculum.’
Salt examined the creature’s face. He saw cruelty and guile, but also anxiety. ‘Saeculum – you mean a cycle! That explains . . .’ Salt gestured to the seed-heads in the meadow.
‘Someone must go from here to there at the ripe time.’
Salt wondered if he had misheard. Ripe, or right? He had no chance to enquire for Ferox suddenly shouted, his head whipping round to face the forest, ‘Fugite!’
Salt needed no encouragement: luminous discs were emerging from the forest. Ferox seized Salt’s crystal light and pointed back towards the tile, the path still visible like the wake of a ship. Salt understood: I’ll draw them off, you go. As he ran, a glowing fungal disc flew past his head, offering a glimpse of recessed eyes and a thin crescent of shark-like teeth.
‘Saeculum,’ bellowed Ferox after him by way of a final reminder, but Salt did not look back until he was well away. He could see the weaselman fending off the attacking fungi with a warrior’s grace, spinning and ducking, the spear dancing around his waist and head. With each successful strike, a light went out.
‘Sum Ferox.’
His journey back was even more painful than his journey there. He sank to his knees and groaned. Usually the tile quickly recharged. Unsettled, he waited and tried again, but the tile did not respond; it was feeling uncharacteristically lifeless to the touch.
The door had closed behind him.
Saeculum.
He paced the clearing, raging in the dark as snow continued to fall. He resorted to the only solace to hand, his whisky flask, swigging deeper with every new failure. He speculated that the stones’ removal might be connected to the closure of the waypoint, even to Lost Acre’s cyclical crisis. The theory only made his bad humour worse.
Now drunk, he kicked at the tile, connected only with fresh air and fell on his back, cracking his head. He closed his eyes and let the balm of the cold drift over him.
‘How did you know he’d be here?’ asked the first voice, which Salt recognised as Bill Ferdy’s.
‘A feeling in my bones,’ replied the second voice.
‘He weighs a ton.’
‘He’s a fool,’ said the second, now half-familiar.
Salt came to as he was swung over someone’s shoulder. He groaned.
‘Hat . . . anything else?’ resumed the second voice.
‘Can’t see nowt,’ replied Ferdy.
‘We’d better get him home quick,’ said the second. ‘In twenty minutes we’ll have a blizzard.’
Salt, barely conscious, registered the remark and identified the second voice – Ferdy’s neighbour, Ferensen, the man with a mysterious ability to predict warmth, frost, rain and snow hours ahead with uncanny accuracy. Behind his back, countrysiders called him the Rainmaker.
‘Let me be!’
‘Quiet – you’ve caused quite enough trouble already,’ said Ferensen firmly. From his upside-down position Salt could make out the old man and his white hair.
‘I didn’t ask for your help,’ cried Salt, and passed out before Ferensen could respond.
The Ferdys’ farm came into view as the snow slackened, rows of hop-poles emerging from the gloom like a fleet at anchor. On the hill beyond the farmhouse stood the strange hexagonal tower where Ferensen lived, its position given away in the blanket of snow only by the firelight behind the windows.
‘My place?’ said Ferdy. ‘My Megan does a mean pick-me-up.’
‘Not half as mean as mine,’ replied Ferensen, ‘and I need to talk to him.’
Bill Ferdy deferred to Ferensen, as he always did, but his tenant’s answer to how he had known Salt would be in that particular place –
‘a feeling in the bones’ – struck him at best as incomplete. He sensed trouble ahead.
Ferensen’s tower comprised a single room where he thought, studied, exercised, cooked, watched the stars, stored books, slept, washed and lived. He would descend to the main house when in need of a bath or company. The room had the appearance of an intricate memory test, so cluttered were its contents.
Three sides of the hexagon had floor-to ceiling-bookshelves (and it was a high ceiling) signed in ornate gilt letters at the top: Natural, Antiquity and Affairs of Men (various). Two adjacent walls accommodated a single bed and a contraption that served as a shower. The last wall, opposite the doorway, boasted a generous fireplace, wide and deep, with a wooden mantel carved with grotesques in the best Rotherweird tradition. Round it, like an audience, ranged a long sofa and several high-back Jacobean chairs with basketweave seats. From the ceiling, open to the rafters, hung charts of the heavens, the oceans and Rotherweird Westwood, the latter liberally marked with the location of rare fauna. Horizontal poles, held aloft by pulleys, held sticks, coats, hats, capes, a beekeeper’s suit and a
parachute. This miscellany suggested a reclusive polymath with no regard for the History Regulations.
The fire had an open grate on a stone hearth, its flue coiling along the wall like a snake before disappearing through the roof, whose exterior featured a bewildering mix of solar panels and nesting boxes awaiting the advent of Spring. The higher books were accessed by large movable steps with solid sides not unlike a mediaeval siege-engine in appearance.
‘Throw him down here,’ said Ferensen, pulling the sofa up to the fire, ‘and let’s get those outer clothes off.’
Salt started to sing:
‘I remember the Duke of Buccleuch,
He was taller than me
And brighter than you . . .’
‘God save us, what a racket! Ferdy, get me the Black Bodrum Nightraiser Special, third shelf up.’
Ferdy found the tin in a line of other tins, all with remarkable names. A pungent aroma of coffee permeated the room.
Ferensen brewed a pot on the fire. ‘You don’t deserve this,’ he muttered, ‘but needs must.’
Ferdy held Salt’s head still as the old man poured. The effect was instantaneous.
‘God save us,’ spluttered Salt.
‘It’s all right, Bill; go and tell Megan you’re back.’ Ferensen added, ‘You did well. Odds are you saved his life.’
As so often, the brewer was impressed by Ferensen’s energy. Ferensens had lived in the hexagonal building as long as Ferdys had lived on the farm. They would disappear for decades, but a returning Ferensen always had a key to the house. The History Regulations prohibited the preservation of family photographs and diaries after the death of their owner, so nobody knew what earlier Ferensens had looked like. His father had known one, and his grandfather another before that. The house had been empty during his childhood, but after his father’s death, this Ferensen had turned up. He had never mentioned his ancestors, and Ferdy did not ask.
Ferensens kept certain rules. They never went to town, and insisted on complete privacy. Their name – always straight Ferensen – was not to be mentioned by countrysiders in town, and this injunction was religiously obeyed. The Ferensens were their secret, contributing much to the rural community, with their unparalleled knowledge of horticulture, trees and animal illnesses. This Ferensen taught countryside children arcane subjects not on the School curriculum, with flair.
Bill Ferdy hesitated before leaving his friend. He had been wrestling with whether to consult Ferensen about the strange offer made by the late-night visitor to The Journeyman’s Gist. He needed advice, but did not want to trouble the old man. He let it pass.
‘Where was I?’ asked Salt, voice and intonation restored.
‘You tell me,’ replied the old man, hanging up their damp outer clothes on racks the other side of the fire, while surreptitiously checking Salt’s pockets.
‘Somewhere southish . . . ?’
‘You can do better than that.’
‘Near some beeches.’
‘Imagine two lines running straight from the end of Old Ley Lane and Lost Acre Lane – follow them into the country until they meet.’
‘Something like that,’ conceded Salt.
‘You promised me. Nobody goes in. Ever.’
‘I only go to check on things.’
‘It’s unforgiveable – and highly dangerous.’
‘I only got attacked once. Anyway, nobody can be now. Once I got back, the waypoint closed.’
‘You sure?’
Salt was now moving into a hangover phase. ‘Of course I’m bloody sure.’ Salt peered into the cup. ‘What the hell is this?’
‘Coffee special enough to shake a sot from his dreams, but sadly, it can’t cure ingratitude.’
Salt muttered a near-inaudible word of apology. Despite a mild nausea, his mental faculties felt enhanced. Ferensen’s coffee was clearing his head like balsam. He had an insight: Ferensen alone with his books and his objects needed company.
‘You should get a dog.’
Ferensen said nothing. Salt thought of Lost Acre’s twisted fauna –
birds with snouts, rodents with scales, carnivorous fungi – and a disturbing insight came to him.
‘Ferensen the naturalist has no cat and no dog. I say something happened in Lost Acre – why you won’t go back. Why you can’t have animals here while you sleep.’
Ferensen flexed his fingers at the fire as if casting a spell, and then changed the subject. ‘Ferdy brings news from town. There are strange events. The School historian disappears. The Manor reopens. Now an old way closes. Might they be connected?’
‘There’s another. In Lost Acre something is seriously wrong.’
‘Lost Acre is wrong. It’s an abomination. The closing is all for the good.’
‘You want Lost Acre to die – its creatures, its plants?’
‘What do you mean – die?’
‘The ground was choked with seed. Fliers and crawlers are laying on open ground.’ There were few pure birds or insects in Lost Acre; the orders mixed and matched so that one talked of fliers and crawlers. ‘It’s all out of season. They must sense cataclysm. I went further than I’ve ever been and I saw—’ Salt stalled. His selfish desire for secrecy resurfaced. He did not want to share this discovery, even with Ferensen.
‘I know what you saw.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You saw a patch of slippery sky. I can show you on your map.’
With irritation Salt realised Ferensen had been through his clothes, but he could hardly protest. Ferensen spread out Salt’s simple chart on a table. The drawing was competent, the annotations obscure, but Ferensen could read them.
‘The “T” is the tile entry in the grassland. You have no annotations in the woodland because you have not been back, wisely taking my advice.’ Ferensen turned his attention to the irregular lettered shapes, interlocking like misshapen Venn diagrams. ‘Plant colonies. Weird mixes of our terrestrial species. Your letters approximate to our nearest relative. At a guess – here – grass of Parnassus, although in Lost Acre the flowers are red, not white, and the stems are sticky.’ To Salt’s astonishment Ferensen either knew or guessed most of the rest. Having made his point, Ferensen resumed, ‘You have not marked the patch of sky, or the great tree that stands near it.’ His voice quavered in a rare show of emotion. ‘It’s almost exactly here.’ He placed a finger at the very edge of the paper.
Ferensen was right. Salt stuttered, ‘How can you know? You haven’t been in for years.’
‘That patch of sky has been there for a very long time – at a guess, from the beginning, when primordial explosion or collision created Lost Acre. I call it the mixing-point.’
Ferensen’s display of knowledge encouraged Salt to greater candour. ‘I met an extraordinary creature, even by Lost Acre’s standards – half weasel, half human.’
Ferensen’s face clouded over as if an ancient pain had been dragged to the surface. ‘Ferox,’ he said.
Again Salt was taken aback, and again he asked the same question. ‘How can you know?’
Ferensen ignored the question. ‘He let you live. I’d like to know the reason.’
‘He asked for help. He kept saying “Saeculum”.’
‘A cycle – the natural age-span of a person or a population.’
‘Or a place,’ replied Salt. ‘I have a theory. Rotherweird and Lost Acre are indivisible. This valley has the only way in, and others before us knew, otherwise Lost Acre Lane would not be named and aligned as it is. Way back, government feared the secret would spread and Lost Acre’s monsters might escape, so they gave us independence and banned the study of history. What they didn’t know is that Lost Acre is volatile, and may self-destruct. What we don’t know is what happens to us if it does.’
‘We would be better for it.’
The odd emphasis was accompanied by a lack of conviction in Ferensen’s voice. Not for the first time Salt sensed the old man was withholding as much as he revealed.
&n
bsp; ‘Why does Ferox speak Latin?’
‘He’s older than you could possibly imagine.’ Ferensen paused. ‘The mixing-point confers great longevity – at a price. He must have said more.’
‘We were attacked by creatures from the forest.’
‘What sort of creature?’ The question came with a strange urgency.
‘Like the fungi you find on dead trees . . . only with eyes and teeth.’
Ferensen visibly relaxed as Salt remembered something else Ferox had said.
‘Ferox seemed to think I was a messenger. He used the word nu – nuntius.’ Salt suddenly felt wearier than he had ever felt in his life.
The last words he heard from Ferensen carried a tone of wry amusement. ‘The effects of Black Bodrum Nightraiser Special are well established: instant recovery of consciousness, a short, sharp period of hangover and ten minutes of clarity, ending in a deep and restorative slumber.’
Seconds later the botanist began to snore. Ferensen poured himself the remains of the coffee. Lost Acre die – and all her creatures with her? Ghosts from the past assailed him. He, Ferensen, had a duty to try – but how, when he could not get in? And when the threat, whatever it was, seemed beyond human intervention? He recalled mention long ago of a black tile, which did not work. Suppose it opened when the white one closed? He determined to try to find it.
As for Ferox, whose messenger did he think Salt was? He could conceive of only one person – but not possible, surely not, God forbid not.
Ferensen stood up. He liked this weather, his tower cocooned in flakes of frozen moisture. He consulted his skin. The snow would stop in an hour. In three the sky would clear. Warmth and thaw were at least two days off. This he knew as fact, not opinion. Where had this gift come from? What had they done to him all those years ago?
‘Like the fungi you find on dead trees . . . only with eyes and teeth.’
4
Of Invitations
Barely two weeks into term time Oblong received a message, unsettling in its terseness: Mayor’s Office, 11.30 a.m. today. Important.
Rotherweird Page 8
