The Sword of Straw

by Amanda Hemingway

  At the bookshop, Annie had just made tea.

  She looked surprised to see him again—surprised and pleased. He was pleased she was pleased, but he didn’t know how to show it. He accepted a cup with added sugar and propped one buttock on the edge of her desk.

  “What’s a loralilly?” he asked.

  “A loralilly?” Annie frowned, puzzled. “Oh—you mean a lorelei: is that it? A kind of siren, a water spirit…”

  “Maybe.”

  “In legends they sit on rocky islands, serenading passing sailors. The sailors are so enchanted by their song they come too close to the rocks, and their ships are broken, and they drown. Not exactly good citizens, loreleis. Were you planning to arrest one?”

  This was the Annie he liked, sensible, down-to-earth, despite her imagination. He was glad she wasn’t talking about giant worms anymore. Of course, she must have been joking—she was joking now, in a gentle, teasing sort of way. A sense of humor was a good thing: he must develop one sometime.

  “Somebody mentioned them in the pub,” he said. “How come everyone knows about these things except me?”

  “It depends what books you read when you were a child,” Annie said. “Most of us get through Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, the Chronicles of Narnia…Tolkien, Alan Garner, Roger Lancelyn Green. What did you read?”

  “Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Good stuff,” Annie said. “I read those, too. But if you’re going to go chasing loreleis, you’ve got some catching up to do. Let me know if you want background reading.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t have the time.” He had odd evenings in front of the telly, but he wasn’t going to start reading fantasy. God knew where that would lead.

  He thought of telling her about the motor launch, and the mysterious woman, but the incident had unsettled him in ways he didn’t want to discuss, and he let it go. He almost thought he’d imagined it, only imagination wasn’t his thing. He believed in evidence, and instinct—instinct honed by experience—not the wild speculations of an erratic fancy. Forensic science could tell you almost everything these days…except the secrets of the human heart, the strange pathways of the mind.

  When he had finished his tea he left almost as abruptly as before, afraid to find himself talking too much about loralillies, and man-eating worms, as if such things really existed.

  NATHAN WAS waiting at the bus stop when Hazel came home from school. For a second her face lit up—then something in her expression fogged, as if she was deliberately withdrawing from him.

  “You’re mad at me,” he said, “because I haven’t been around lately. I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “You had other things to do.”

  “I shouldn’t have done. You’re my best friend. I didn’t mean to take you for granted.”

  “Of course we take each other for granted,” she said. “People do.”

  At her house they retreated to the bedroom, though Nathan thought Hazel seemed oddly reluctant to admit him. She had run out of Coke and didn’t seem to have any new music she was eager to play for him. He said: “What happened to your mirror?” and she shrugged again, but her gaze slid sideways, avoiding his.

  “Accident,” she said.

  “You should be more careful,” he said, picking up the candle-stump from the clutter of her dressing table. “There’s so much guff in here, if you knocked this over you could easily start a fire.”

  “I’m careful,” she snapped. “Don’t fuss.”

  Presently she began to relax a little, and he related the saga of his adventures—the Deepwoods, the woses, his feelings for the princess, his close encounter with the Urdemon. She was excited by the news of woses like Woody and impressed by the demon, but didn’t appear very enthused by his descriptions of the princess, announcing unexpectedly: “I’m a republican.” He asked what had been happening to her, but in an automatic way, or so she told herself, without pressing her, or intuiting that something was wrong. Eventually, she made an excuse about homework, and said he would have to go. Since Hazel never bothered about homework, always avoiding doing tomorrow what she could put off from today, Nathan was both unhappy and unconvinced. He knew she didn’t want him and decided it had to be all his fault, picking at his nebulous guilt like a scab all the way down the street. Without really noticing where he was going, he found himself on the path to the river.

  In her room Hazel lit the candle-stump and glared into the broken mirror, muttering the liturgy of summoning. Nothing happened. She tried again, speaking louder and more forcefully, still without result. Then she groped for Effie’s notebook and began leafing hastily through it, looking for words of conjuration and Command, wishing she’d read it more carefully beforehand. Finding a page headed INCANTATION TO BIND A RECALCITRANT SPIRIT she began to read, stumbling occasionally over the pronunciation, ignoring the footnotes about protection and precautions. Clouds slid across the mirror, diverging on the crack, so the two halves didn’t match. Briefly she glimpsed as if through smoke a ship with white sails, and a single figure at the helm with blowing hair and pointed ears; it could have been man or woman. Then the ship changed, becoming a modern cruiser, and the figure was Lilliat, smiling her silver smile. “Mi-venya!” Hazel ordered. “Té nimrrao, su vier ti-nimrrassé!”

  Lilliat turned, so she was gazing straight at Hazel. Her face altered and darkened; her eyes grew wide; the smile parted to show the pointed teeth of a predator. Her outstretched hand crackled with power that came rippling through the mirror crack like the whiplash of an electric eel. Hazel jumped back, but not fast enough, not far enough—in the confines of her room she had no space to maneuver. The impact sent her sprawling, the tail end of the lash catching her face, leaving a savage burn across her cheek. As she fell, her head collided with the bedstead, and when she hit the floor she was unconscious.

  THE MIST crept through the village, draining it of color and substance, turning it into a phantom village of insubstantial buildings and people who loomed up suddenly and then vanished without a word spoken. Sound was either muffled or carried strangely: footsteps might be heard, apparently close by, with no visible feet to keep them company, or there would be a raised voice—a call—and when you approached, no one would be there. A few cars crawled along the road, their lights gleaming out for a minute and then fading into the fog. People dived into the pub, the deli, the bookshop, needing to talk about it, telling each other they’d never known it so bad—you couldn’t see more than a couple of yards in front of your face—attributing it variously to the unnaturally wet summer, global warming, or the new cell phone mast erected controversially close to the church. Somewhere up above the sun was still shining, but all that could be seen of it, now and then, was a smudge of brightness that failed to penetrate the mist veil.

  The fog lay thickest over the water meadows and along the river. Nathan walked slowly, lost in a trance, his mind as blank as the blankness around him. He had forgotten why he was going that way, if there had ever been a reason, but it didn’t matter. He moved like a zombie in a pale, empty world. Sometimes, a spectral tree passed him by, shadow-faint although it might only be a few feet away. Presently he saw he had reached the river. The tide was high and he could make out the water lapping just below the border of the path, and the ripples running downstream as the current changed. Without making any conscious decision he stopped, close to the willow-stump, waiting. A tiny niggle of thought disturbed the paralysis of his brain, straining to remind him of something, urging him to some unspecified action, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t respond. His mental processes had shut down; there was nothing in his head but the mist, and the waiting.

  A shape emerged through the brume, drifting toward him. For an instant he thought it was an elf ship like the ones in stories, with swan-neck prow and carven wings, then even as it drew nearer it seemed to shrink, and he saw it was a swan, its neck curved, its wings half furled, floating with the current. It sailed past him and disappeared almost immediately,
white in the whiteness of the fog. With its disappearance he felt as if whatever he was waiting for had come and gone, and he turned to retrace his steps along the path.

  This time there was no drowsy humming, and the engine was so quiet he could barely hear it, merely a faint throb in the background. But the song was very close, the pure sexless voice piercing the mist in his head, not a warning but a guide.

  Follow the foam of the dolphin’s run

  over the pathless deeps;

  there in dark without moon or sun

  there where the Kraken sleeps

  where the bones of long-lost galleons rot—

  the desert undersea—

  there the goddess decks her grot

  with mermaids’ eyes—for thee!

  Nathan no longer heard the words or, hearing, no longer understood. The verse had become a part of the spell, one strand among many, entwining his thought, weaving him into the net. He saw the woman leaning toward him, over the rail of the boat, and in her hands she held his rugger shirt, the one he had lent Hazel, and somehow that decided him, if there was anything left to decide.

  “This is yours,” she said, “isn’t it?” He nodded. “Come to me, and you can have it back. Come on board. There is room for just one more.”

  The launch appeared empty, save for her, but he didn’t doubt or question. She stretched out her hand—he stretched out his—they almost touched. Then he jumped, vaulting the rail somehow, landing lightly on the deck—so lightly the boat hardly tilted. The mist flowed over him and through him; it was bitter cold, as if it had blown straight from some polar waste, but he didn’t shiver. The woman smiled, and her teeth glittered like points of ice, and her slanting eyes were moon silver and shadow black. She held out the rugger shirt.

  “Put this on. You must be cold.”

  He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, but he put it on over the top.

  “Don’t take it off,” she said, “even to sleep.”

  The riverbank slipped away, and there was only the mist.

  “What is this ship?” he asked, not out of real curiosity, more for something to say.

  “It’s mine,” she said. “One of many. All ships come to me, in the end.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “My home.”

  He was very tired—so tired he could barely lift his eyelids. He thought he had been wide awake a moment earlier, yet he felt as if he had been tired for a long time, fighting sleep, desperate to give in. The woman took him aft, where steps led down to the cabins. He saw no one at the wheel, no hand on the throttle, yet the boat held to her course. The woman showed him into a cabin with a wide bed, deep soft pillows, a quilt like a drift of snow. He tumbled thankfully into the embrace of pillow and quilt, heard the closing of the door as the woman left.

  But he couldn’t sleep, not yet. He wanted to sleep—sleep was bearing down on him like a great weight—but there was something wrong, a germ of discomfort in the welcoming softness of the bed. Of course: he still had his shoes on. He loosened the laces with clumsy fingers, wriggled his feet out of them, and lay down again. But there was a lump digging into his back: his rugger shirt had rucked up under his arms. He pulled it off and dropped it on the floor, forgetting or disregarding the woman’s injunction. Now at last sleep would come…

  HAZEL DIDN’T know how long she had been unconscious: she only hoped it wasn’t long. She stood up, fighting dizziness. Her head ached and her cheek burned, but that wasn’t important now. Her brain, functioning in slow motion, hung on grimly to a single train of thought. Lilliat-Nenufar—a boat—boats meant water—the river. The river.

  She was out of her room, out of the house, running down the street, stumbling and bumping into people in the fog. It was beginning to clear now, thinning in the heat of the sun, separating into ragged curtains that drifted out over the meadow, hung around for a while, and then evaporated into nothingness. By the time she reached the river path there was sunlight ahead of her, wan and pale at first but growing brighter, growing warmer. The school didn’t insist on much sport and she was panting for breath, but she kept going. As she neared the bank she called out Nathan’s name, her voice a croak. There was no reason for him to have come this way but she knew he had—knew it with the certainty that always precedes something terrible. The path was empty; the sun sparkled on the water. The dread darkened inside her.

  She went on downriver, farther than she had ever been before, walking, running, walking. A swan came out of a reed clump and waddled toward her, hissing; she had never seen a swan on the Glyde. With its neck extended it was up to her chest, and it seemed very aggressive—perhaps it was protecting a nest. She shouted at it, waving her arms, until it backed down and let her pass. A little farther on she saw something wedged against the bank. There was a moment when her stomach clenched, remembering Effie, but she got a stick, and nudged it closer, until she could fish it out of the water. It was a shoe, a lace-up sneaker. She recognized the zigzag pattern on the side at once.

  It was Nathan’s.

  SOMEONE WAS calling him. He didn’t want to wake up but he knew he must; the call wasn’t loud, but it was compelling, its pull as strong as gravity. He groped his way through muffling folds of sleep—through the veils of space and time—into the spinning star-dark of another world. And all the while the voice was calling, calling. When he came to himself at last the voice was there, near at hand, no longer insistent but cool and quiet.

  “Nathan.”

  He opened his eyes. There was a face looking down at him—a face all beauty and arrogance, power and pride, with a mouth that might have been sculpted in steel and a cold deep gaze softened now by some alien emotion. The skin was both dark and golden; the black hair shone with a luster that was almost green, almost blue. The customary hood was thrown back, the mask discarded. The Grandir—ruler of Eos, lord of a dying universe, watcher over more than a dozen worlds. A man whose schemes were too deep to penetrate, whose purposes too lofty for comprehension. Looking down at Nathan with something like concern in his face.

  “I almost lost you,” he said. “The werewoman is skilled, for her kind, and your mind is limited. You know so little…so little. She has gone, but she will return. She senses the pattern, and the power. The time has almost come, but you still have much to do. I cannot always protect you. I can reach into your thought—open the portal—but only if you let me. Had you kept wearing the garment she bespelled…but fortunately, I was able to induce you to remove it. My influence over you is wayward, but the sleep she put on you allowed me through. Be calm: there is no more need to fear.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Nathan said. It was true—though there was a shivering deep inside him that was almost like fear. He was aware that he was lying on a bed or couch, under a coverlet, in a room with soft lighting; but he saw only the Grandir.

  “It is well. You must have wondered why the gnomons didn’t come, but the enchanted mist befuddled their senses, and there was a noise in the spellsong that they cannot endure, though no mortal ear could hear it. Forgive me: I had thought they would prove more effective guardians.”

  “The gnomons?” Nathan remembered the unearthly swarm, only half solid and invisible in his world, which could invade the human mind, draining thought, bringing madness.

  He said: “I thought they protected the Grail.”

  “For centuries that was their task,” the Grandir explained. “But I sent others to watch over you and your mother. They are Ozmosees: they can move between worlds. They appeared adequate for my purpose. But your danger increases—and I did not expect you to be so reckless. That moment with the Urdemon…”

  “Was it you who saved me?”

  “Both times. But at the second confrontation the creature had more than marsh power—there was something else lending it substance…I was barely in time. Do not take such a risk again. You have only one act to perform in Wilderslee: the rest is distraction.”

  “But…what act? What—”

/>   “You will know. The act must be involuntary, or the pattern will be disturbed. The Urdemon is merely a diversion, no matter how perilous. Avoid it.”

  “It’s a bit difficult,” Nathan said. “There are rather a lot of them.”

  “No. There is only one, though it has many forms. It slept under the marsh for five thousand years before it was disturbed. Now it is angry, hungry, and very confused. Let it stay that way.” Nathan tried to sit up, full of eager questions, and found himself gently but firmly restrained. “Sleep now. Return to your own world. There may be a time when we can talk, but it is not yet. Remember: you must take more care. I cannot…always…protect…”

  The voice faded, and he was falling once more into the star-dark, the sleep channel between the worlds. For a minute he resisted, fearing to find himself back on the white ship, reduced to an automaton, his brain fogged with magic…She has gone, the Grandir had said. Remembering that, he let go, feeling safe and thankful, slipping away into unconsciousness…

  This time, it was Annie who roused him, a look of relief on her face. He was getting to know that look much too well. He was in his own bed, and his mother was shaking him, and Hazel stood behind her holding a sodden sneaker in one hand.

  “Do you think,” Annie said when they were downstairs, “you could manage to spend twenty-four hours without being kidnapped, or getting yourself coated in demonspit, or losing your shoes in the river so people think you’ve drowned, or—”

  “I’ll do my best.” He turned to Hazel, who was still clutching his shoe. “Did you find the other one?”

  “No.”

  “Damn. Those are my favorites. Let’s go look for it.”

  AS THEY walked along the riverbank, Hazel told him what she had done. All about her crush on Jonas Tyler, and Ellen and the Sniggerers—Lilliat, the tokens, the rugger shirt. He said he forgave her—forgiving was easy—but she knew that afterward, when he thought about it, a tiny germ of distrust would remain, perhaps never to be eradicated. She was his best friend, and she had let him down, in the worst way, betraying him for a price, a reward, for her own advantage. He said: “I let you down, too. I wasn’t there for you”—but they both knew that was a little thing compared with her treachery. Her sentences got shorter, her tone more gruff, the more he tried to reassure her.