And so Fay took a breath and sang, for the first time since the loss of her daughter. She was out of practice, and her voice sounded lost and plaintive in the enormous banqueting hall. But she thought of the moment when Alberon had tried to take her backpack; the moment at which he had tried to trick her into taking a goblet of wine; and she sang the song the tiger had sung to her at the edge of the forest:
My plaid away, my plaid away,
And o’er the hill and far away,
And far away to Norroway,
My plaid shall not be blown away.
Why did she choose that particular verse? She did not know, except that it felt powerful, somehow, and that the words had surprised the King, and shaken his composure. They did not shake it now, she saw, with a touch of disappointment: his eyes were bright with amusement, as all around her the dancers stood, their moths’ wings fluttering eagerly, their plume-like feelers reaching out as if to feed on the music…
As Fay reached the end of the song, Alberon clapped his approval. ‘Brava, brava, brava!’ he cried, and all his courtiers clicked their claws, and fluttered their wings, and capered, and danced. ‘And now you must rest,’ said Alberon, ‘and take the Night Train in the morning.’
Fay tried to protest, but King Alberon swept away her objections. ‘You must be exhausted,’ he told her, ‘after all your adventures. What you need is a good night’s sleep, in a bed of softest swansdown, with sheets of the finest, whitest lawn, scented with sage and lavender. Cobweb! Peronelle!’ he called. ‘You shall see to her every desire, and sing her to sleep with lullabies. My Queen,’ he said, once more addressing Fay, ‘I bid you good night, and sweet slumbers. And in the morning, if you so desire, we will speak once more of the Night Train, and of your quest for your Daisy.’
Fay found herself being led away between Cobweb and Peronelle. There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask King Alberon but her head was spinning with fatigue, and the thought of sleep was too tempting. She allowed herself to be led into a cavern of majestic proportions, with a floor of raw granite, gleaming with gold, lit with clusters of torchflies, in which stood a huge claw-footed bath and a bed with green brocade curtains. The bath was filled with hot water, and there were warm towels by a fire, and rose petals scattered over the floor and in the steaming water.
‘Shall we help you disrobe, my Queen?’ said Cobweb.
Fay shook her head.
‘Then maybe we could sing to you? A lullaby, to soothe your sleep?’
Once more Fay shook her head. ‘No, thank you. Leave me alone, please.’
Peronelle shot her a mischievous look. ‘My Lady is an ungracious guest,’ they said. ‘What does he see in you?’ And then they turned and left the room, singing an impudent fragment of song. Their voice, as high and sweet as a lark’s, echoed down the passageway:
Queen Orfae went down to Mayfair,
Every rose grows merry with time…
Cobweb shot Fay a reproachful glance and followed Peronelle, leaving Fay alone in the beautiful chamber. The steam from the bath rose into the air, warm and irresistible. The torchflies glowed and glittered and shone like dancing wreaths of fairy lights.
She took off her brocade ballgown and stepped into the water, feeling her aching muscles relax at last as she surrendered to the warmth. She closed her eyes and, for the first time since her daughter had died, felt a genuine sense of well-being; even almost of happiness. The water was scented with lavender and scattered with scarlet rose-petals. Eyes still closed, she breathed in the scent – and then she heard the sound of approaching footsteps, light as a cat’s, and opened her eyes to see Mabs at her side, still in her moth-grey velvet gown and her crown of twisted silver.
‘My Lady,’ she whispered, ‘have no fear. I’m here to help.’ Little remained of the woman she’d been that night on Piccadilly. Now she seemed regal, luminous, her eyes as dark as the night sky.
‘Help me?’ Fay said. ‘Why?’
Mabs lowered her voice still further. ‘I don’t have much time to explain,’ she said. ‘King Alberon knows everything that happens here in World Below. He wants you to forget your life, to remain here in his kingdom. So far you have resisted him, but if you want to leave this place, take nothing, give nothing, and most of all, do not give up your shadow.’
Fay looked around at the bedchamber; the warm and welcoming fire, the bed piled high with pillows and surrounded with hanging draperies.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘For everything you accept from him,’ said Mabs, ‘he steals one of your memories. Small things at first but soon you will find yourself losing days, and weeks, and years, until all that is left is Alberon – his face, his voice, his glamours – and your shadow, and with it your memory, and all that remains of your other life will fade away, so that you will be bound to stay in his world for ever.’
‘But I haven’t accepted anything,’ protested Fay.
‘Oh, but you did. A story. A song. A dance. These things all have power,’ said Mabs.
‘But that’s impossible,’ said Fay. ‘How can a story have power?’
‘Stories and songs are the language of Dream,’ said Mabs. ‘The oldest and most magical tongue. The bees discovered it, long ago, and carried it throughout the Worlds – all the Worlds of the honeycomb.’
‘But he promised to help me find Daisy,’ said Fay.
‘And so he will, if you hold fast.’ Mabs sighed. ‘I have told you all I can to help you vanquish Alberon. Stories and songs are his currency, his power and his glamour. Riddles too – especially those. But they can be used against him, too – as long as you keep your wits about you.’
She looked behind her into a dark that was stitched with gleaming torchflies. ‘I must go, my Lady,’ she said. ‘His servants and spies are everywhere. But keep your plaid safe, and your memories, even if they give you pain. Oh, and if you can’ – she turned, light-footed, at the cavern’s mouth – ‘find out how King Orfeo came to lose his shadow.’
And then she was gone into the dark, her silver hair shining like starlight; the sound of her feet against the stone no louder than that of a moth’s wing against the flame of a candle.
Five
Fay dried herself with one of the towels hanging by the fireplace. Mabs’ visit had troubled her, and her sense of unusual well-being was gone. And yet in spite of this she felt better; more grounded, more true to herself. As if she had emerged from a cocoon of novocaine. The numbness was deceptive; hiding pain, not healing it.
Had Alberon charmed her somehow into forgetting her grief? Fay could almost believe he had. For a magical evening, she had… no, not quite forgotten her loss, but at least had felt the pain recede into something approaching acceptance. Was that what Mabs had meant when she said: Keep your plaid safe, and your memories? And what had she meant when she spoke of losing her shadow?
Fay dropped the towel and looked for her shadow on the chamber floor. In the soft light of the torchflies, it looked less distinct than usual. But that was just the light, she thought. There was no reason to believe that her shadow had lost definition. And yet – she looked at the four-poster bed with its curtains, its white linen sheets; its blanket of silk and swansdown. It looked like a ship, she told herself, tall enough to sail away across the sea to Norroway. What dreams would she dream in such a bed? What distant shores she would visit?
Her pack was still lying on the floor, looking old and out of place on the gleaming granite. She opened it and looked inside, hoping to find something to eat. She was very hungry now, having eaten nothing in twenty-four hours but a handful of blackberries. She found an apple, two cereal bars, and a bottle of water – enough to make a meal of sorts, without eating the food of London Beneath. She felt very tired, and longed to try the beautiful bed that looked like a ship but, remembering what Mabs had told her, instead took out the dark-blue blanket beneath which she had slept the previous night – a blanket much too small for her, and printed all over with silver st
ars. Looking at it now, she knew the blanket must have been Daisy’s. Daisy had stars on everything – her tent, her toys, her bedclothes. And it must have been important to Fay, for her to have taken it on her run. How could she have forgotten it? And yet, somehow, she clearly had. Could this be Alberon’s doing?
She thought back to the previous night. It seemed so long ago to her now, so far away, in another world. But she remembered dancing with him, and sharing a madcap cigarette, and drinking a cup of that harsh, but somehow smoky, woodland spirit—
I accepted his hospitality, thought Fay to herself in dismay. That’s why I forgot Daisy’s blanket. How many of her memories had she already lost to him? And what unknown risks was she taking, just by being in his kingdom?
She spread Daisy’s blanket on the gleaming granite floor. It was cold and hard, but the layer of fabric would give her some protection. Her running things were gone, and only the hoodie in her backpack and the dress made by the tailor bees remained. She put the dress on, and the hoodie for warmth, and lay on the blanket on the ground, using her pack as a pillow. She did not expect to be comfortable: and so it was with some surprise that she awoke from a dark and dreamless sleep to find herself on a railway platform, deserted, with no sign of life, and saw it was morning.
The Night Train
≈
Dan he took out his pipes to play,
Bit sair his hert wi d’ol an wae.
Child Ballad no. 19: King Orfeo
One
For a moment, she was disoriented. Where was the beautiful chamber? The bath, with its feet of polished brass? The four-poster bed, like a sailing ship? The clusters of blinking torchflies?
All that was gone. The bedchamber had become a railway station. High above her head, a glass roof allowed a cold and wintry light to filter onto the platform. The gleaming granite floor had changed to a worn and grubby concrete. The dress that she had worn to the ball had become a scant thing of colourless rags that disintegrated like cobwebs at the touch of her fingers. Her running shoes were still intact, except for the missing laces, but otherwise she was wearing nothing but her underthings and the oversized hoodie, which had belonged to Allan, and thus was large enough to pass as some kind of minidress.
She rolled up Daisy’s blanket and looked around. Where was she now? What world was this? The station was not unlike King’s Cross, but without any of the chaos of London Beyond, or the dark brilliance of London Beneath. A pale dust lay on everything, undisturbed but for the marks of her presence. Could this be Nethermost London? And if so, where was the Night Train?
Looking across the railway lines, Fay could see no sign of a train. The signal at the platform’s end gleamed a dark, impassive red. There were no depart-ure boards; no advertisements; no graffiti. A single bench stood on the platform, although there was no sign of other passengers. She could not even be certain that the pale light above her was daylight. She looked for her shadow on the ground. It seemed rather fainter than usual, though whether this was due to the muted light or Alberon’s glamours, she could not tell. She realized she was hungry but searching through her backpack she found only the crumbs from her cereal bar and a mouthful of water left in the bottle. There were no vending machines in the station, and no sign of shops, or an exit; and so Fay finished her crumbs and drank the dregs of her water, and bundled Daisy’s blanket away, and tried to fix the broken straps of her backpack by knotting them firmly together, and then she sat down on the bench and tried to list all the details she could about her life in London, to see if she could identify any gaps in her memory. But all that seemed very far away; far away and long ago, and all she could really be sure of was the glimpse she had seen of Daisy that night, through the crack in the pavement—
Then she remembered the notebook that was clipped to her key ring. She searched for her keys and located the book, no larger than a matchbox, with its tiny pencil attached. It was far from easy to use: her fingers were clumsy, the pencil so small, and yet she managed to use it to write, in words almost too small to read:
Daisy’s eyes: blue. Her hair: brown. Favourite toy: her stuffed tiger.
Fay frowned, trying to recall the name of the tiger. Had it even had a name? She remembered the little travelling girl saying to her in London Below: Tigers don’t have names. Had Daisy said that too? Fay couldn’t remember. The girl had looked like Daisy, she thought: perhaps she had confused the memories.
Or maybe it didn’t happen, said a quiet voice at the back of her mind. Maybe you were dreaming, and none of this ever happened at all.
‘That isn’t true,’ said Fay, as if someone had spoken the words aloud. Perhaps they had; she told herself. Perhaps this was another of Alberon’s tricks, and she was still in London Beneath, asleep on the gold-studded granite floor.
If you say so, said the voice, and once more Fay turned around to make sure no one had spoken. But tell me, how did Daisy die? Tell me again. I’ve forgotten.
Fay shook her head. ‘I don’t have to,’ she said.
She stepped in front of a train, didn’t she? said the voice relentlessly. Stepped under a speeding train that didn’t stop at the station? Fay said nothing. The voice went on: Do you think perhaps this obsession with trains might have something to do with that?
Fay shook her head. ‘You’re not real,’ she said.
As opposed to the giant moths, and talking tigers? Oh, Fay, said the voice, and now Fay thought that perhaps she knew whose voice it was. Janine, her therapist, had precisely the same tone of slightly jaded sympathy. Don’t you think it’s more likely that you’ve had some kind of an incident? Maybe you were mugged, Fay, on your nightly run through the West End. Or maybe you’re inventing all this as a diversion from the truth: that you’ll never see your daughter again?
Once more, Fay shook her head. ‘That isn’t true,’ she said aloud.
Oh, but it is, said the quiet voice. And now you’re sitting half-naked on a railway platform, talking to people who aren’t there, waiting for a train that will never come.
‘Be quiet! This isn’t a dream!’ cried Fay. Her voice clanged against the brickwork of the empty station. But there was less conviction in it, and at the back of her mind there was a cold and growing fear that if she stopped and listened hard, she might hear the sounds of the real King’s Cross ringing out between the Worlds…
‘It wasn’t a dream,’ she repeated. ‘It wasn’t a dream. I can prove it.’ And from the pocket of her pack she brought out the rose that had come to her on the wind of London Beyond: its petals slightly withered now, but red as the heart of a furnace.
A rose? said the inner voice mockingly.
‘The rose that came to me after I saw Daisy through the pavement cracks,’ Fay said with a surge of triumph. ‘After I met Alberon. After I woke up on the street.’
Proving nothing, said the voice, although it lacked conviction.
But Fay had regained her self-confidence. Picking up the pencil once more, she wrote in the tiny notebook:
The cake I made when she was four, shaped like Thomas the Tank Engine.
The first time she went to the theatre.
The sandcastle we built, the three of us, on the beach in Brighton.
The coffee shop at King’s Cross, with a cup of chocolate.
Feeding the squirrels in Green Park.
The toy theatre Allan made for her third birthday.
Her first day at school.
Her first Christmas.
Her blue tent, embroidered with stars.
In the park on Bonfire Night, writing our names with a sparkler.
Making cookies with Allan and me.
The pavement game.
The Shadowless Man.
Grabbing my finger, the day she was born. It felt as if she would never let go.
And then with a final effort, she wrote:
I’ll never forget her. Whatever it costs. I saw her, asleep in the bluebells. I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her back. My plaid shall not be b
lown away.
At the back of her mind, the inner voice gave a kind of defeated sigh. Fay smiled and kept on writing. These stories had power. She knew that now. She found herself singing as she wrote:
My plaid away, my plaid away,
My plaid shall not be blown away.
Two
Time passes at a different pace in the path of the river Dream. Fay tried to work out how long she had been waiting on the platform, but her phone had run out of battery, and her Fitbit was telling her that it was six in the morning, midnight and ten minutes past five on 8 April, 3 June and 19 December simultaneously.
She put the Fitbit into her pack, next to the blanket and the dead phone. The light from the station roof had not changed since she had woken up, and there was no way of telling if it was daylight up there, or some other form of illumination. When will the train arrive? she thought. How will I get on board? She had no money to speak of: besides, she guessed that her currency would have no value in this world. So what did she have to offer? Tales and songs are his currency, Mabs had told her in London Beneath. Well, Fay knew plenty of both, she thought, but what kind of story would summon the Train? Once more she thought of the travelling girl; the tiger; Alberon and his people. All had shared versions of that same song – a song that told the mysterious tale of a knight whose horn could summon the winds…
The elphin knight sits on yon hill,
Bay, bay, lily, bay.
He blows his horn both loud and shrill,
The wind hath blown my plaid away.
My plaid away, my plaid away,
And o’er the hill and far away,
And o’er the sea to Norroway,
My plaid shall not be blown away.
Her voice was a little uncertain, but it rang across the platform. And couldn’t she feel a distant response – a subtle resonance – that gilded the air like pollen and lifted the fine hairs on her arms?
Orfeia Page 6
