Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

He reached for her again, knocking the table so that it scraped against the floor, grabbing her arm and pulling her closer. Sammi knew it was wrong. They were in public, in a café with forty other people, and Old Itch had no idea how to act in front of them. He’d looked at her burn patterns half a dozen times, each time muttering to himself as he tapped her arm, shoulder, back, until he seemed satisfied and they carried on moving. They’d taken two bus journeys, one of them almost five hours long. They’d walked. Wherever they were going, it was further away than she’d thought.

  She still didn’t know what or where the Fold was. She had never heard of a place with that name, and it was strange that Old Itch didn’t know, either. Especially as her mom wanted Sammi to go there.

  Good girl, Sammi, she heard, and the voice was a soothing balm, filtering into her mind, easing her perception and senses, like her mother’s hand on the back of her head when she was a little girl.

  “Everything okay here?” The voice was deep and gruff, with an accent she couldn’t quite place. It brought Sammi back from whatever hazy place the words—her mother’s, perhaps imagined, or maybe whispered into her ear—had taken her to.

  “I’m fine,” Sammi said. “We’re fine.” Old Itch was still leaning toward her, his sharp nails hooked into the neck of her tee shirt.

  “Doesn’t look fine,” the man said. He was very tall, bearded, arms knotted with muscle and tanned a deep mahogany. “You her dad?”

  Old Itch looked up at the man, surprised. He’s not all there, Sammi thought. She wasn’t sure whether or not she’d spoken those words, and she knew suddenly that they were true—not in the casual way they were sometimes used, but literally. Old Itch wasn’t all there, although he had spent the span of their journey fitting himself into her world.

  That’s okay, that’s fine, the voice said. It might not have been her mother after all. Sammi sometimes panicked when she forgot her mother’s face or voice, but they always came back. Hearing these words didn’t bring the comfort the voice usually possessed.

  “I asked you a question, pal.” That voice. British. A clean accent, but the threat was apparent.

  “Mind your own fucking business,” Old Itch hissed.

  “You attacking a young girl in public is my business,” Beard said. He reached between them and grasped Old Itch’s arm, clasping it so tight that Sammi thought she saw his fist close into the skin, his flesh. Beard’s eyes widened with surprise at something he felt, and then Old Itch stood and reached up for him, curving his hand around the back of the man’s neck and pulling him down, closer.

  Sammi tugged free and slid off her chair. She felt the attention of the whole place on them, and tried not to panic. Several people began to stand up. Stay calm, the voice that might or might not have been her mother said. If she ran she’d be lost. You’ll be lost. She was safer with Old Itch. He’ll keep you safe.

  Old Itch and the man moved closer, and for a moment it looked as if they were about to kiss. They grasped each other’s clothing, tensed, pushing and pulling, a conflict that saw neither of them give ground. Then Old Itch pulled Beard’s head down onto his shoulder, opened his mouth, and pressed his face into the man’s neck. Sammi could no longer see their features.

  Violence sizzled in the air, a bloody potential that silenced the café and brought pause to its customers. Several people were frozen, half out of their seats, as if thinking again about their instinct to help. An old woman held her coffee cup in front of her face, lips puckered ready to accept the rim to her mouth. A child sat in a high chair, staring wide-eyed at the scene playing out just a few steps away from it, a line of spittle drooping slowly from its mouth to the floor.

  At any moment Sammi expected Beard to lash out and send the shorter, thinner Old Itch flying.

  Beard stood upright again, frowning. His hand went to his neck and rubbed, as he looked past Old Itch at a wall of posters advertising local music and poetry events. He was searching for something, trying to massage a thought back into his head.

  The baby started crying.

  “We’re leaving,” Old Itch said. He reached for Sammi, then paused, glancing around at the other patrons without moving his head. “Please,” he said, lower. It was a quiet order, not a plea.

  Sammi stood up and walked to the door, and her companion followed. She felt many eyes watching her go, and she smiled at a middle-aged couple close to the front door, as if to say, It’s fine, he hasn’t taken me or anything.

  Although she was no longer quite sure.

  “What did you say to him?” she asked when they were back on the street. Old Itch led them down an alley between buildings.

  “Say?” he asked. “Nothing. A gentle bite was enough.”

  “You bit him?”

  Old Itch didn’t reply. She followed him across a large stretch of concrete that must once have been the floor to a long-demolished warehouse of some kind, and on the other side they came to a canal. Ten minutes along the towpath he stopped and turned to her.

  “The map,” he said.

  Sammi thought about running.

  “We need to see,” he said, and his words were frantic, troubled. “Your mother’s waiting.” She realized for the first time just how old he looked. In sunlight his flesh was almost opaque, skin hanging loose. She thought back to when she’d first seen him, barely more than a shadow.

  “Are you really real?” she asked, and Old Itch simply scratched at his chest again, shirt moving aside to reveal the weeping wounds beneath. His smile was wan, exposing his too-long teeth.

  “Let me see,” he said. He reached for her sleeve, started examining her markings, and she hoped her mother would be in the Fold.

  I’m there already, the voice said in her head. It’s beautiful.

  “Close,” Old Itch breathed. He sounded excited. “Very close. Tomorrow we’ll be there, and then…”

  “And then?”

  “Things move on.”

  14

  “If he looks for patterns, then so should we,” Angela said.

  “Follow the trail,” Vince said.

  “Right.”

  They were heading west. Meloy had hired a big Jeep Wrangler, and he drove while Lilou sat in the passenger seat. Angela and Vince were in the back, and several times since setting off Angela had looked around for Ahara. She was nowhere to be seen.

  Perhaps she knew Lilou was coming, she thought, looking at the back of Lilou’s head. Even from behind the nymph was beautiful. Meloy’s devotion to her was obvious. Vince’s still troubled Angela, but she was growing to believe it was more fascination than a sexual bond. Lilou amazed him. In truth, she amazed Angela as well.

  She’d been surprised to see Meloy, but there was a strange comfort to him being here as well. He was confident and capable. He was also dangerous, but she was no longer really afraid of him. It was those who hunted and hurt the Kin who should be afraid.

  Meloy had come to the USA with more than ten thousand dollars in cash. Enough to have him stopped and questioned at border control, without a doubt, but he and Lilou had apparently breezed through. Angela didn’t like the way that made her feel jealous. If she attempted to leave the country she’d be caught, arrested, and spend the rest of her life in jail. An upside of Meloy’s cash was that they could afford the technology to do what Angela planned. He’d handed over a grand without a flicker, and she suspected that ten grand wasn’t much to him at all.

  The laptop balanced on her knees was as light as a paperback book. The map function was so clear that it almost felt like being in a satellite, able to target in and zoom down on individual houses, and with a definition high enough to probably identify individual people. Perhaps some of the people in these composite images taken from orbit there were Kin, caught out in the wild when they thought they were alone and safe.

  I wonder where I was when these pictures were taken, she thought. The map was dated the previous year. She’d have been in London then, and if these images were taken on a sunny afternoon
, in London it would have been early evening. She and Vince might have been sitting in their garden sharing a bottle of wine and waiting for a couple of steaks to cook on the barbecue. It was strange to look at the image of the world as it had been back then, and wonder where people had been at that moment, what they were doing. It was a moment frozen in time.

  “And the last one?” she asked.

  Using his phone, Vince checked reports about lightning strikes, those victims who had been struck a second time, and the four survivors who later had met a grisly end.

  “Little town outside Boston.”

  “Right. That’s all the strikes plotted, including second strikes and the four murders.” She reduced the map a little so she could include all the plotted points. “The murders all took place over the past thirty hours, and all within about a hundred miles of Hartford.”

  “What about times?” Meloy asked. “If Gregor’s on the move, they might indicate direction.”

  “There’s nothing in the reports,” Vince said.

  “Even if there was, they wouldn’t release anything that accurate,” Angela said.

  “Hack the cops’ computers,” Meloy said. “Remember, they’re looking for this bastard too. We use their resources, as well as our own.”

  “First, it’s not easy to hack a secure system, even if you’re a computer wizard,” Angela replied. “Are you one, Meloy?”

  “Not me,” he said. “I have friends back in London, though.”

  “I don’t think that will help,” Lilou said. “We have an advantage because we already know motive. We know much more of what’s going on than the police. Any faulty intelligence we glean from them might hinder us, more than help.”

  “So we’re on our own,” Angela said quietly. She looked at the points plotted on the map, blue for double strikes, and four reds for the murders. The horrifying idea came that there might be a fifth body within the scope of the map, just waiting to be found.

  “What about the scars?” Vince asked. He peered at his phone, swiping and enlarging.

  “What scars?”

  “These scars.” He held it out for Angela to see. “Most of the strike victims reported them. They look like ferns.”

  “Or river deltas,” Angela said. “Send me the link.” A minute later she called up the image on the larger screen.

  “Oh,” someone said. Angela glanced up. Vince looked around, and Lilou had frozen, turned around in the front seat.

  “You didn’t tell me you had a wisp,” she said.

  “Oh, look,” the voice whispered again, and the air between Angela and Vince started to haze. Angela shuffled across the seat, moving closer to her door.

  “Vince?” she asked.

  “I thought she’d gone,” he said.

  Lilou’s reaction shocked Angela. “I don’t like wisps! Why the hell didn’t you tell me, Vince?”

  “I told you, I thought Ahara had gone!”

  Ahara had not gone. She manifested between Angela and Vince on the back seat, blurring in like a double exposure, then more solid. She leaned slightly to the left so that she could look closer at the computer screen.

  “What do you see?” Lilou asked. “Something about that?”

  “Quiet, nymph,” Ahara said. “Let me look.”

  Lilou’s lips pressed together. She stared at the newcomer.

  “What’s the problem?” Angela asked.

  “Kin stuff,” Lilou said. “It isn’t your business. Don’t bother yourself with it.”

  “It’s my business if—”

  “I said don’t bother!” Lilou shouted. The car swayed a little as Meloy jumped. Angela had never heard Lilou raise her voice, and Vince seemed taken aback as well.

  The nymph’s mask slipped through her anger, and her sensuous influence swept through the vehicle like a surge of power. As if they had been struck. It was such a primal, powerful sensation that Angela felt sick, her insides churning.

  Meloy kept glancing at her, and reached out for her, giving her more attention than the road, bewitched as never before.

  “Meloy!” Angela shouted. “Lilou!”

  “And so the nymph plays her games some more,” Ahara said. Lilou hunkered down, lowering her face, lifting her shoulders, and soon Angela felt the effect bleeding away. Vince and Meloy breathed heavily. The crime boss focused on the road ahead.

  Ahara reached for the computer screen, and as she touched the image of the lightning burns she drew in a deep breath.

  “It’s the map of a fairy,” she said.

  “What does that mean?” Angela asked. “Can you read it?”

  The wisp said nothing. She traced her ambiguous fingers across the screen, and when she touched, the image was dragged along as if following the contact.

  “Ahara?”

  “It’s moving,” she said. “A map of movement. Yes, I can read it.”

  “Then tell us where to go,” Meloy said.

  “Lilou?” Vince asked. The nymph remained crouched down in the passenger seat, making herself so small that Angela could only see an arm, her shoulder, and the side of her head.

  “Yes,” Lilou whispered. “If the wisp can read it, we follow.”

  “We’re all in this together,” Vince said.

  Lilou laughed, a loud bark that didn’t sound like her. There was no sensuality about her reaction this time. Only bitterness.

  Angela held the laptop to the side as Ahara examined the image of the skin markings more closely.

  “I can’t see it all,” Ahara said after a while. She passed her hand back and forth across the screen, as if trying to turn the arm pictured there.

  “Can’t you see enough?” Vince asked.

  “Some,” she said. “West.”

  “How far west?” Meloy asked.

  “West… until we get there.”

  “No riddles,” Lilou said. “No wordplay, wisp. West is away from the sites of the murders.”

  “I’m not playing,” she said. “A fairy map is a living, changing thing, not something I can read from an image. It’s as if trying to hear what someone is saying from a single photograph of them talking. So… west, and when we’re closer, perhaps I will see more.”

  “It’s toward the center of the spread of lightning strikes,” Angela said. “And we’ve got nothing else.” She took a screenshot of the image, saved it, then started searching the news reports for more information.

  They all fell silent.

  Vince drifted off to sleep, Ahara faded away to a mere haze, and Lilou slowly sat upright again, brushing hair over her ear and staring ahead. Angela couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a single tear form at the corner of the nymph’s eye before she casually brushed it away.

  * * *

  Only a few minutes later she saw something that clasped a tight fist around her heart. A certainty grabbed her that they were already too late. She clicked on the pop-up news link and scanned the report, searching for a name, a place, a photograph that would sever whatever tenuous links she still had to her old life.

  “Another murder,” she managed to whisper, and then she sobbed when she saw a name she did not recognize.

  “Angela?” Vince said, stirring from slumber, instantly alert and as terrified as her.

  “Not her,” she said. “Not Sammi.” Someone else, she thought. Another daughter, another sister, another dreadful loss that a strange family will never recover from.

  “Not this time,” Lilou said. “He’s moving faster.”

  “Then so should we,” Meloy said. “I’ll kill the fucker with one hand.” His threat filled the car and chilled Angela like a cool breath.

  Good, she thought. I hope you get to kill him before he harms another soul. She looked at the clock on the laptop’s corner. Time seemed to be moving quicker.

  * * *

  He is used to living in darkness. In the deep past, the dark was given to him as a punishment. Over time he made his own light, and during the Time he became comfortable living in b
oth day and night, and made them his own.

  This is not true darkness. Weak daylight filters in, and beams drift back and forth across his body like questing fingers. He can almost feel their touch. The movement and the arcing light makes the air around him feel fluid, and he imagines drifting up from the soft padded floor and floating, weightless, while the illumination explores his body. Perhaps it will be surprised at what it finds. Perhaps only sad. Long ago he gave up worrying about what others thought of him.

  The swaying, the movement, the constant sense that everything around him is changing, provoke a sense of nostalgia. A desire for those times long ago when he would wander, walk, and explore. Too much lately he has spent long periods of time hidden away from the gaze of those who could never understand him. Or if they did understand him, they would never accept.

  That is what’s wrong with the modern world, he thinks. Acceptance is too rarely given to that which confuses or confounds. An important sense of wonder has vanished. The irony frustrates him. Confronted with more stories, myth, and wonder than ever before, humanity has drawn in on itself and welcomed in ignorance like an old friend.

  His aim is to wipe away ignorance. Reintroduce that missing sense of wonder. Make it so that he can emerge from the shadows, rise from the stillness, and wander the steppes and plains of the world once again, even if those places are now fields of concrete and escarpments of brick and glass. Whatever future he might forge will never quite live up to his fond, aged memories, but that will not stop him from trying.

  Anything will be better than this.

  He sees a fly crawling across his stomach. He doesn’t know how it made it in here. He splays one hand on his hip and the fly crawls between his thumb and forefinger, then onto the back of his hand. He lifts his hand slowly, turning it so that the tiny creature remains in a shard of light. Dust motes drift like snow around the fly’s wings.

  He blows, a soft puff of air that sends the fly fluttering into the shadows. It has nothing to fear. He won’t hurt it, because the fly has done nothing to warrant being hurt.

  In that, at least, he is fair.

  The journey is long, and away from home he feels unsettled. There’s a sense of safety around the idea of home, and he knows he has to shed that if his ambitions are to come to fruition.