The Silver Bough

by Lisa Tuttle

  “More like a fairy tale, and I agree with you, by the way. The kind of fairy tale people long ago used to believe about this place. We were taken out of the modern world and set adrift in another sort of reality, where the normal rules don’t apply. And then the fog…when that came in, I thought things were going to get a lot more unpleasant. I thought it might be the end.”

  “Maybe it was. The fog was a curtain coming down on this little play—like A Midsummer Night’s Dream—”

  “And returning us to our regularly scheduled reality?” He shook his head. “Why? I think we were headed for a much more permanent end. Until somebody did something to stop it. Maybe whoever started it off?”

  “Something happened while we were asleep…”

  He held up his hand. “I didn’t sleep. I just lay there and watched you.”

  She felt heat rise in her face. “All night?”

  “Not that long. An hour, hour and a half. I didn’t want to risk going to sleep not knowing what I was going to wake up to find. I thought that as long as I didn’t lose sight of you, at least we’d still be together, whatever happened.”

  She felt as if something inside her that had been broken—all jagged fragments that had jostled painfully in her chest, making it difficult to breathe comfortably for so long—had been joined together, each piece slotted smoothly back where it belonged. For some reason, she thought of the wooden apple, imagining that it was not solid, but had been constructed in two parts that fit so well it seemed only one.

  “Maybe what happened was you,” she said softly.

  “Us?” His eyebrows rose and he looked at her tenderly. “You changed my world, for sure.”

  “What happened overnight?”

  His left shoulder rose and fell. “There wasn’t a night. While you were asleep, say it was an hour, the light hardly changed at all—it was the same murky foggy glow from the window. Then, maybe it got just a little bit darker, and it started to rain. It was about then that I heard the humming of the radio alarm clock, too; normally I wouldn’t notice it, but after no electricity, the sound caught my attention. You opened your eyes a few minutes later.”

  “Thanks for watching over me.”

  He smiled. “It was no hardship, believe me. There’s nothing else I’d rather do.” He stroked her arm and cleared his throat. “Now, eat your toast. I don’t want you going to work on an empty stomach.”

  A few minutes later, Kathleen heard the familiar friendly growl of her car’s engine in the yard outside.

  “There’s my man,” said Dave, springing up. “Are you ready?”

  Jamie McKinnon was a wiry, freckled little guy accompanied by a black-and-white sheepdog.

  “Hope you don’t mind Meg being in your car, missus,” he said immediately, before Dave had even introduced them. “I put a blanket down for her, and she behaved herself.”

  “That’s fine, I don’t mind, I’m very grateful to you for getting the car started,” she said, scratching Meg behind her ears.

  “There was nothing wrong with your car at all. Started sweet as a whistle.”

  He went on to explain that he’d left his vehicle parked beside the road where hers had been, and they dropped him and the dog back there on their way to Appleton, with grateful thanks. Kathleen stole a quick look at the lochan as she drove past. It was as silvery-grey and still as ever beneath the cloudy morning sky, but it no longer appeared as sinister. Was that because the world had changed, she wondered, or only her personal situation? The last time she’d come by here, searching for Dave, could have happened in another lifetime. Already in her memory those strange events—the old women at Ina McClusky’s house, the ghost of Emmeline Wall, the water-horse—had taken on the quality of remembered dreams, and she didn’t know how long she’d be able to believe they’d really happened.

  They drove into the changed, familiar town. The holiday atmosphere had vanished with the sunshine. The people on the streets this morning wore their sober, everyday clothes: hats and waterproofs against the expected return of rain, or scarves and sweaters against the first, faint touch of winter on the wind from the sea. She turned on to the main road, heading out.

  As she caught sight of the faded, leaning sign for Orchard House, she made a split-second decision and swung right, turning into the long, uphill drive to Nell’s house.

  “I hope you don’t mind if we make a little detour—I’m just thinking about a friend of mine. I told you about Nell. I’d like to know she got home safely.”

  “Hey, would you look at that!” Dave was turning in his seat, winding down the window, craning out for a better view.

  “What is it?” Nearing the top of the drive, she slowed. Something about the house ahead didn’t seem quite right, but his excitement distracted her from thinking about it.

  “You can see the roadblock from here.”

  She pulled up on the level, paved area in front and stopped the car. He got out immediately, his attention caught by the view of the road at the bottom of the hill, and she followed him.

  “Your car’s still there,” she said, catching sight of the bright red Porsche and thinking he must be concerned about it.

  “Yes, yes, but look at the other side.”

  She raised her eyes beyond the mass of rock and earth, looking farther, and could just see part of the road on the other side of the blockage, her first glimpse of the greater world beyond Appleton since she’d looked down from this very spot on Sunday evening. At that time, the road on both sides had been deserted. Now, the other side presented a very different picture. There were trucks, cars, and a huge, orange earthmover, as well as at least a dozen men scattered about on foot, oddly insectlike in their bright yellow reflective jackets and shiny domed hard hats.

  Dave seemed fascinated by the distant scene. “Wonder if they’re using dynamite? I think they’ll have to blow it, no other way to shift it. You don’t happen to have a pair of binoculars with you?”

  “Sorry, no.” She smiled, amused by his boyish enthusiasm, and left him to it. She turned back to the house and, as she really took in the sight of it for the first time, felt a cold hand clutch her heart.

  Nell’s house had been painted a subtle, elegant shade of moss green with cool grey on the trim; it had looked fresh and immaculate. This house, although it was the same solid, two-story wooden building, had been neglected for years. It was a worn and faded white, with a darker, greyish undercoat showing through, and on the shabby front door and crumbling window frames, ancient black gloss paint had cracked and peeled. The windowpanes were filthy, and one had been replaced with a piece of thin board. Several of the paving stones at the front of the house were broken, and all sorts of weeds grew in the gaps between them.

  She stared at the evidence of desolation and mentally retraced her route, trying to convince herself that she’d taken a wrong turning, driven up the wrong hill, but knowing she had not.

  Dave put a hand on her shoulder. “Your friend lives here?”

  “She did on Sunday. But it wasn’t like this.”

  “Shall we try the door?”

  “Let’s go around the back.”

  She could almost have convinced herself that she’d misremembered the front of the house, fooled by the lovely interior redecoration into thinking the exterior was in better condition than it actually was, but about the gardens there could be no mistake. They were Nell’s pride and joy, and she remembered eating dinner on a little patio, close enough to the herb garden to inhale the varied, heady scents…

  There was no patio, no table, no herb garden, no vegetable garden, no greenhouse, nothing but waste ground turning rapidly to wilderness. Where the paved area had been were clumps of stinging nettles and giant hogweed; instead of carefully tended roses, a tangle of brambles; cow parsley and dandelions flourished where the vegetables for their dinner had been grown, and a pile of old bricks, rotten timbers, and odd bits of scrap metal took up the rest of the space.

  “It’s impossible. I was
here on Sunday night! We sat out eating dinner—eating vegetables she’d grown, right there.” She waved her hand at the impossible wilderness the well-tended garden had become. “She had a greenhouse, over in that corner, and—I mean, you can knock things down, but thistles and giant hogweed don’t spring up overnight!”

  “Did you know this woman before the landslide?”

  She frowned, understanding the implication. “I didn’t imagine her—and she wasn’t a ghost!”

  “Kathy, you don’t have to justify yourself to me. Was she an old friend?”

  She sighed, shook her head. “Sunday was my first visit. But loads of people knew her—she’d been in Appleton for years, fixing this place up. I knew her from her visits to the library—she requested some things we had to get through Inter-Library Loan, specialist articles, mostly, about apple-growing.”

  “Apples! Was she the one you told me about, with the tree bearing fruit and blossom at the same time?” He began to look around. “Where was that tree? Can you show me?”

  “She had an orchard inside an old, walled garden. Down there somewhere.” She pointed, wincing at the prospect of fighting their way through the trackless wilderness. “I wish I had my high boots on.”

  “Never fear, fair lady, I shall break a path for you,” he said with a bow, and they made their way slowly and carefully across the inhospitable wasteland, to the walled garden. She was relieved to find it still there, but as soon as he forced open the warped and battered old wooden door in the wall, her hope died.

  The apple orchard was gone, as if, like everything else Nell had repaired, changed, built, planted, and tended, it had never been more than a fantasy. Instead of rows of carefully nurtured trees, the enclosed space was a mad confusion of growing things, some of them survivors of the garden that had once been here, others incomers from seeds dropped by birds or rodents, or blown in on the wind. The garden was protected on three sides only; the fourth wall was crumbling, half-caved-in, the bricks furred with brilliant green moss and sprouting a crop of hardy weeds, even a slender sapling rowan tree.

  As she gazed around, comparing this reality to the picture in her mind of Nell’s orchard, she could feel the remembered image crumbling like the old brick wall, overwhelmed by the pressure of all this real and growing vegetable life.

  “Here’s the apple tree,” said Dave.

  “What?” She turned and stared, but couldn’t see what had caught his eye. As she began to move toward him, a thorny tendril caught at her leg. She unhooked herself, wincing. “How can you tell? Are you sure?”

  He gave her a sardonic look. “It has an apple growing on it.”

  She forgot all concern for her clothes and bashed through the undergrowth to reach his side. The tree he’d discovered was very small and looked ancient: gnarled and bent low to the ground, with flaky white scales erupting here and there along the crooked branches, and brown-spotted leaves. It didn’t look very healthy, but the single apple that it carried was beautiful, without a blemish, smooth and yellow and inviting.

  She reached for it at the same moment that he did, but his hand closed about it first, and he was the one who plucked it from the tree.

  “Halvsies?” he said, and she nodded, feeling suddenly oddly breathless, on the brink of something momentous.

  He pulled a folding knife out of his pocket and cut the apple in two.

  “That’s the wrong way to cut it.”

  He shrugged. “I always liked to do it that way, to see the star in the middle.” He handed her a piece, and she saw what he meant. The fruit felt warm, as if it had been resting in the sun rather than in this shady place, and a subtle yet heady aroma rose from the cut flesh.

  Her mouth watered but, afraid of disappointment, she hesitated. “It’s probably some old cooking apple, incredibly bitter—”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I think this is the apple that made Appleton famous—the last of its kind—incredibly delicious—but we’ll never know unless we try.”

  “Together?”

  At his nod, they each bit into the apple. It was sweet, yet sharp, with a surprising complexity of flavor that defied simple analysis. She swiftly took another bite, then another, until she’d eaten it all except for the seeds.

  She looked at Dave, who took the hand with the seeds in it and, clasping it tightly, whispered, “Make a wish.”

  She could think of nothing to wish for. She had what she wanted: this man, this feeling between them, this moment and hope for more like it. She was happy, and she knew it. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

  “Now kiss me,” he said.

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER...

  KATHLEEN SETTLED THE last of her newspaper-wrapped dishes into the cardboard box, closed the flaps, and reached for the tape dispenser. A ribbon of shiny brown squeaked out, then snagged. It was the end of the roll.

  She sat back on her heels and looked around the living room, nearly filled with carefully packed cardboard boxes, and had a flash of déjà vu. A year ago, she’d been confronted by this same sight, only then the chore ahead of her had been to unpack and find a place for everything in the bijoux Library House which was to be her new home. Now, sooner than she’d expected, she was moving on. A tingle of nervous excitement ran through her at the thought of what the next year might bring. To live in a library had been her childhood wish come true, but to be moving in with the love of her life—well, that truly was her heart’s desire.

  In any case, she would have had to vacate the Library House, because it was going to be needed for office space. There were big changes coming to Appleton Public Library; not only a new computerized system, and computers with free Internet access for the public, but more staff, longer opening hours, and substantial redevelopment plans for the museum.

  Glancing at her watch, Kathleen rose to her feet, stretching the kinks out of her arms and legs. It was too early for lunch, but since she was going to have to go out to buy more tape, she thought she might as well take a break. With her own cups and kettle packed away, she had the perfect excuse for visiting the new café that had just opened on the high street. Called The Magic Bean, it advertised an interesting list of specialty coffees and teas, and looked surprisingly cosmopolitan for Appleton.

  But Appleton was changing. The Magic Bean was only one of several new businesses to have opened in the past few months, and throughout the town center other commercial properties, long vacant, were being refurbished and redecorated as shops, restaurants, or offices as people scented new possibilities in the air. Kathleen recalled how last September, while most people were complaining about the inconvenience of being cut off, a few had suggested that the landslide might be the best thing to happen to Appleton in a long time. Now it seemed that they had been proved right. Newspaper articles and television features about the isolated little town had attracted a lot of interest. After one celebrity couple chose to get married on Southport Beach, near King Arthur’s footprints—musical accompaniment to their “traditional Celtic handfasting ceremony” provided by a local band, who were immediately signed by a major label—the area became even more famous as a destination for a romantic short break. The local hotels had their busiest “off-season” ever, and it was widely expected that this year’s tourist season, just beginning, would be a stunning success.

  The front door of the Library House opened onto a quiet back street, and it was still quiet on this cool morning, but as soon as she turned the corner toward the town center, Kathleen could feel the buzz, the positive life force which had recharged the whole area. The physical changes might be small—a new sign here, a new coat of paint there—but Appleton was very different from the faded, forgotten backwater it had been a year ago. The atmosphere was utterly changed, filled with a new hope and optimism, and this time Kathleen knew she wasn’t simply projecting her own emotions onto her surroundings.

  She went into the newsagent’s where she bought the tape she needed and a newspaper. During this brief transaction three people cam
e into the shop, and every one of them greeted her. It gave her a good feeling, to be recognized and liked, and she knew she was now really part of the community. She would have gone with him anywhere, but she was glad that Dave wanted to stay at White Gates.

  She saw more people she knew outside. It was easier for her now to recognize the visitors in the busy streets. She enjoyed her status as a local all the more among the crowds of tourists admiring the scenery and wistfully fantasizing about giving up their stressful existence in the city for a new life here. Such visitors were often to be seen standing outside the estate agent’s window, viewing the details of properties for sale as longingly as kids in front of a sweet-shop.

  As she approached it now, Kathleen cast a quick, amused glance at the people standing outside the window only to stop, startled, to look again before calling out, uncertainly, “Nell?”

  The tall, willowy brunette turned in response, and at the sight of her face, Kathleen had no doubts. “Nell Westray! It is you! Where have you been?”

  There was no answering recognition on Nell’s face, although she smiled back, a bit quizzically. “I’m awfully sorry, but I don’t remember…how do we know each other?”

  Well, of course she doesn’t remember, because it hasn’t happened, thought Kathleen, dazed all over again as she confronted an impossibility. There was no proof that anyone named Eleanor Westray had ever lived in Appleton—she wasn’t in the phone book, or in the card catalogue of library members, and everyone she asked assured her that Orchard House had stood empty for years, an unsalable white elephant that had just been put back on the market this month. The only evidence—if you could call it that—was Kathleen’s memory, and that had grown steadily more tenuous, less clear, until the sight of this woman brought the past rushing back.