Light Errant

by Chaz Brenchley

  The downspiralling road took us out of the immediate glare, the lightfall from the lighthouse, though it still flared its look at me! message to a hopefully-watching world. Jamie could have made torches or fireworks or wills-o’-the-wisp if they’d been needed, but the moon gave us light enough to walk by.

  Light enough to romance by, also. Janice’s feet lagged, unaccountably to me; when even shy backmarker Christa had overtaken us, I murmured, “What’s the matter, is it all catching up with you? Not far to go now, love, and it’s over.”

  “It’s not, you know,” she said certainly. “It’s hardly started yet.” And then she stopped dead, whch meant perforce that I stopped too; and she said, “Nothing’s the matter, actually, I just wanted to be sure you weren’t staring at Laura over my shoulder,” and then she kissed me. Again.

  o0o

  I didn’t even think to look, to see if Laura was gazing back to find us. I didn’t think much at all, until I registered her hand inside my jeans, her fingers cool against my heat. Then I broke away, rough enough to make her gasp; but even then I was only thinking, later...

  And said it, had to say it, not to have her think that I was thinking Laura...

  “Later,” I said, aware that I was gasping also. “Not now, not yet, that’s all...”

  “Raincheck, then?” she said softly, to be sure of me. “You’re not raining on my parade?”

  “I wouldn’t dare. Even the bloody weather wouldn’t dare.”

  That drew a chuckle from her, her hand into my back pocket and her head to my shoulder, where it best fitted. We set off so, she matched her pace to mine and we soon caught up with Christa. Janice’s free arm dropped around her shoulders and we went on as a threesome with Jan making casual girl-talk about the relative density of the English male, purely I thought—I hoped—to win a smile from my shy and edgy cousin.

  o0o

  The others were grouped by the open gates when we eventually caught up, gazing in silence at dark and seething water. The tide had come in and gone out again—all part of the plan, Mr Macallan—but there was still no chance of a dry way over, where I had broken the causeway.

  Jamie had gone through on his own to stand where I’d stood before, only a few metres from where the tarmac turned to rubble and nothing, where the sea pecked at its crumbled edges. I detached myself from Janice and went to join him, the smug pleasure of the latter almost, almost overriding the reluctance of what came before.

  He didn’t turn round, though he must have heard me and known me from my step or his deduction or else something deeper, something instinctual, blood calling to blood.

  He lifted his head a little from his contemplation of the waves, and just said, “How?”

  “Later,” I said, one more time. “Wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For that,” I said, and pointed past his shoulder.

  o0o

  Over on the mainland, on the Military Road a car’s headlights were cutting at the night, their beams dipping and rising, turning as the road turned, flashing full-frontal in our eyes and turning again.

  We watched it come, watched it turn into the car park and sit still, its lights still burning like another kind of beacon. No other traffic was moving; I thought I could hear its engine, grumbling across the water.

  “So? It’s Lover’s Lie-in, over there.”

  “Not tonight, it isn’t. Look.”

  Here came another, on the track of the first; and a third and a fourth along the coast, that must have thought the dual carriageway to be a faster route from town.

  Jamie was persuaded by then, but we waited a while longer, till there were a dozen cars in that car park and more than a dozen men out on their feet, standing in a loose group and staring towards us. Seeing little, I guessed, against the black unlit bulk of the Island, certainly seeing less than we were. No matter. Jamie suggested giving them a sign, but I said no. Let them wait a little, as we had waited.

  “What are we waiting for now?”

  “Just you,” I said, smirking slightly. “Come on, part the waves for us. Let’s walk on the water.”

  “Listen, hyperbrain,” and oh, did he sound fed up, and did I rejoice at it, “I can’t, I’ve been thinking and I can’t, I just can’t see how...”

  “Clue?” I suggested guilelessly.

  “Benedict...”

  He was growling now. I grinned, and said, “Think about sand. Soft sand, how you’d make a good path to walk on through it.”

  “I am not,” he said, “stamping into that,” with a gesture at the sea’s chaos before us.

  “Don’t stamp, no. Press.” And then, relenting, “You ripped a road up, remember? Didn’t think twice about that. So you can do the opposite. If you can pull things up, you can press them down. Squeeze it, good and hard.”

  “Ben, man, that’s water out there. It’s a liquid, it doesn’t bloody press. It doesn’t squeeze.”

  “Glass is a liquid,” I reminded him. “Technically.” We’d picked that up at school once, in a physics lesson, and loved the concept of it. “Remember? It flows, if you just leave it long enough.”

  “So?”

  “So you can walk on glass.”

  “If you have to. If it’s strong enough.”

  He was weakening, I could hear it in him; he was getting interested. “Good and hard, Jamie. That’s all it takes.”

  “Have you, have you done this, then?”

  “Me? No. I only thought of it this afternoon. Thought I’d leave it for you.”

  And then I stepped back a pace, no more jokes now. It was his to do if he could, if he could meet the challenge of it; and if not, hell, we’d just have to yell over and tell them to find a boat. Not a problem really, but I did want Jamie to do this for me, for all of us. To lead us Moses-like, dry-shod across the sea...

  o0o

  He stood stock-still, rock-still, working on it in his mind. I’d been light and teasing, but it was no easy task in truth. Two hundred metres or so he had to run his road, to a point we could barely see in moonlight; and he was going to trust Laura to it, he had to be sure.

  Then he lifted one hand, just a little, just to waist height. I watched the water, and saw a line of light sparkle across the surge, blue phosphorescence, nightfire dancing on the waves.

  On the stilling waves.

  Attaboy. The word was on my tongue but I didn’t even breathe it, not to break his concentration.

  The nightfire was a by-product here, only fallout but I was well glad of it, for the light it gave to see by. I saw a path make itself through the sea, two paces wide; I saw it flatten, depress, sink down maybe half a metre so that walls of water built up on either side. Walls that held, that only spray came over.

  I stepped up beside Jamie again, heard how hard he was breathing.

  “That it?” I asked softly.

  He licked his lips, while his eyes stared fixedly. “Dunno,” he whispered. “I think that’s all I can do. This, this ain’t easy, bro. Is it enough?”

  “Well, let’s see.”

  I strolled forward, as unconcerned as I could make it look, not for his sake but for the girls’ behind us. The drop at the causeway’s edge was a metre or more, down into a trough where blue light glittered and ran over black stillness, broken only where the odd edge of rock thrust upward. Too far to stretch a toe down, to try it. This was my payback, I supposed, his revenge. Nothing to do but take a leap of faith.

  I breathed deeply, once, and jumped.

  o0o

  And skidded when I landed, lost my feet completely, landed joltingly on my butt. Yelped from the shock of it and then laughed, couldn’t help it, from the surprise and the relief and the sheer delight of being proved wrong. I’d almost been expecting to bounce, on water jellied under the pressure of Jamie’s talent; I’d forgotten the chill of nightfire, hadn’t thought that what had seemed only a side-effect would be so effective, to freeze the surface of the sea.

  Pulled myself to my feet still
giggling, and then up and out again, over to the gates, no idling now. How long Jamie could hold this together was a question I didn’t want to ask, more particularly didn’t want to learn an answer to.

  “Come on, then,” I said briskly. “Snap it up. We’re walking home, kids. It’s slippy down there, mind, but solid as rock.”

  Snap it up they didn’t, but edged, rather, sidled forward with many a sidelong glance at me, at Jamie, at each other. Everyone seemed to have found a hand to hold; not to be left out, I found Janice’s.

  I ushered them straight past Jamie, right down to the water, to that weird conjunction between man’s work and magic’s. When I saw them staring, shuddering, trying to back away I said urgently, “Don’t think about it. It’s there, it’s to use, that’s all. Look.”

  I jumped down again, more carefully this time; stood firm on solid ice—how deep? Don’t think about it—and reached up, both arms to help with the jumping. “Who’s going first?”

  Pause. Silence.

  Then Janice, “We’re all going together.”

  Well, not quite, but I didn’t say so. I just took her hands, took her weight as she leaped lightly down beside me; squeezed her fingers gratefully for showing them a lead, and turned back for the next.

  To my surprise, Christa was at the front. I gripped her waist and lifted her easily down, she seemed to weigh almost nothing; gave her a grin and a kiss on the cheek, “Good girl,” and nudged her on to Jan.

  Serena had to bully the others a little, but they all came down, all the cousins. Just Laura left now. When I reached to help her, she shook her head.

  “I’m not going. Not without Jamie.”

  Fuck it! This was not good; but, “You bloody are,” came from behind her, from the man himself, in a harsh groan. “Who do you think I’m doing this for? Go on, go! Now...!”

  “I’m not leaving you on your own.” There was less certainty in her voice this time, though, and she was looking at me even as she spoke to him.

  “Of course you’re not,” I said, reaching for that light and easy tone again, almost making it work. “I’m staying till you’re all over, then us two are coming across together.”

  “So why can’t we all go at once?”

  Because neither one of us knows if he can do that, stupid...

  She wasn’t stupid, of course, she’d worked that out for herself; but her hesitation was upsetting some of the others. I tried to blast that into her head with a telepathic glare, as I said, “Why do some parents always take separate flights? Because they’re neurotic, pet, that’s all.” And I gripped her waist and lifted her down too, to stop her thinking that one through to the obvious implications. She weighed plenty, did Laura, with their baby inside her, but I managed not to fall or even stagger, and I kissed her cheek also. “Go on, now. Quicker you are, quicker we’ll both be with you.”

  And then I clambered out again, and by the time I’d turned around Janice was leading them off in a long crocodile, each of them holding hands fore and aft.

  “Back up, Ben. I can’t see.”

  I backed up all the way, to stand beside him; and we watched our women slither across the sea, and at last saw them reach the rubble on the further side and scramble up. To be met by men, Macallan men I was sure, I was certain, I hoped to God...

  “Christ...!”

  “Don’t let go yet, Jamie,” and I was suddenly urgent, now I could afford to be. “There’s still us.”

  Technically, we didn’t matter so much. Our safety was inherent in the girls’, we could wait for a boat if we had to. Only, I wanted to be over there. More than this would be happening tonight, and I wanted my say in the rest. And I wanted to see Jamie safe with Laura and me with Janice not to see either of them stranded among Macallans, and also I wanted to meet that promise, later...

  Jamie turned his head slowly to look at me. His skin glistened unhealthily, his hair was dank with sweat, his breath came in hard painful gasps, and he was grinning like a moon-happy fool.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  “Checking if it’s still there, when I don’t look at it. It’ll need to be.” He blinked a couple of times, then said, “Is it?”

  “You know it is.” Didn’t look any different, any less solid to me. It still lay like an impossible frozen ford through the water, holding hard against the sea’s suck and all the imperatives of nature.

  “You fit, then?”

  “Fit as I’ll ever be.” It was him that looked bad, that didn’t look up to this; I was just praying his exultant mood would carry us over.

  “You want to fly?” he suggested, with a thin cackle. “We could try flying, see if that works too.”

  “No, Jamie, I don’t want to fly. What would I tell Laura, if it didn’t work? I can’t give you back to her all broken. Come on, we’re going to walk it. Heads high, feet dry.”

  I hoped.

  o0o

  Side by side, we stood on the edge; one last glance at each other, which was both a betrayal and a declaration of confidence—I have my doubts about this, bro, and you’re the only one I can admit it to—and then side by side we jumped.

  Jumped and skidded, clutching at each other for balance; and started walking, good steady pace, heads up and eyes forward. Like walking past a rottweiler on the loose, I thought: don’t look round, don’t let it see you’re afraid. Don’t let it smell your doubts. Don’t run.

  Ahead everything looked normal, if the word ‘normal’ can exist in the same universe as a corridor of seawater iced solid and running with light, while the unleashed sea swirled and hissed just a few scant inches behind walls of chill, only intangible will to hold it. I didn’t want to see or know what was happening behind us. Whether Jamie could hold those walls together at our backs, while he himself walked between them. I thought it just might be too much like trying to haul yourself up by your own bootstraps, the laws of physics and magic both ought to be against it...

  Halfway and all seemed well or well enough, except that my feet were bitter cold now and Jamie’s grip on my elbow was getting tighter, tingle turning to a hot pulse as he urged me on.

  “Better hurry, coz. I think I’m losing it.”

  Don’t run. “You’re not losing it, Jamie man,” I said, even as my treacherous feet picked up speed to deny me. It was all in his head; if he thought it was gone, then it was gone. And we were too far, far too far from safety for him to lose it yet.

  “Look,” I said, stooping to thump the wall of the walk, about knee-high to me. How deep the water was that we walked above, I didn’t like to think. Not so deep, actually, this was the causeway’s route and its rubble was still down there, sometimes rising to trip us and never more than a metre beneath our feet; but a man could drown in very little water, and the sea would be vengeful if it caught us now, would hurry us away from here I thought and hold us a long time in its privy halls.

  “Look,” I said, stooping to thump, meaning to show him how stiff and solid he was holding it; but the wall seemed to crack, seemed to break and spring a leak so that my hand came up running wet. “Shit,” I said. And then, hastily, “Spray,” I said, “just spray, I’m soaked all over already.”

  Which was pretty much true, but irrelevant. What we walked on felt not so solid suddenly, and Jamie wasn’t grinning any more. When I saw his head turn to look back, I knew he was right. He was losing it.

  “Fuck,” he gasped, eyes front again, stiff and staring, measuring how far we had to go. “Think we’d better run for it, mate. I can’t do this...”

  “Yes, you can. Sure you can, and we’re not running anywhere,” just walking very, very fast now. slipping and sliding like kids on an icy pavement. I could see the walls bowing, bending inward, and my feet were wet now as well as cold. More than spray was splashing over the edges, making puddles.

  Twenty metres. Five long skidding strides, and it was only fifteen. Even with my eyes glued to the sunken path we walked, trying to add my useless to Jamie’s faltering
will, I was aware of figures stood in safety at the end there, waiting for us, pale faces above dark clothes and voices calling, encouraging, urging us on.

  Three further strides, and there could only be a dozen left; and a surge of water came from behind us, lapping and tugging at my ankles, making me stagger. And then I did look back, we both did; and Jamie said, “Oh, fuck,” and I swear I could smell his fear, unless it was my own.

  Never mind the protocol, sound advice and confidence-boosting wasn’t going to help us now. Water can’t crumble, but that was how it looked in the dark there as the nightfire faded, a long glowing line of light dying from sight as the walls crumbled and fell in atop it.

  We grabbed at each other, and ran.

  o0o

  Ran through water that was ankle-deep and then calf-deep and getting deeper; ran on a surface that ran itself, that seemed to melt beneath us; ran, waded, plunged, floundered towards where the voices were, seeing nothing now but the water that swirled and surged and tried to claim us for its own as there was nothing left to run on, nothing to push against, only each other to cling to...

  o0o

  How we covered those last few metres, I honestly don’t know. You couldn’t say we swam, not with our arms tight around each other and our bodies bucking and twisting in the rampant sea. We just kicked, I guess: kicked against the world and its monstrous sense of irony, kicked against all the shit and all the glory and somehow just had momentum enough to carry us through, to where strong cousinly hands could haul us out.

  o0o

  We lay on sand-gritty tarmac, sodden and shaking, gasping and spitting up salt, colder than the water and God knew that had been cold enough. I had water in my eyes, in my ears, it felt like I had water in my skull; I could neither see nor hear nor think. I was only dimly aware of anxious female voices, being overriden by men; it was male hands certainly that came down hard on my back, squeezing what little air there was out of my lungs. Just checking, I supposed, making sure they didn’t squeeze out water. Took a massive effort to push myself up against that pressure, to bend my head around and whisper, “Don’t, I’m okay...”