Daisy, thought Fay. My Daisy. Her eyes were blue, and I loved her. And once more, she remembered why she was there, and raising her voice to the hard grey sky, she said in a voice that rang across the desert like a summons:
‘The first was bees. The second was Dream. The third was Death. Now come to me; I will sing you a song the like of which you have never heard, and you will give me my daughter back, and then my tale will be told.’
For a time there was no reply from the dusty plains of Death. And then Fay heard the sound of laughter behind her, and turned to see a man standing there on the turbulent shore of Dream. A man – she could not in fairness say if he was a friend or a stranger – his face, his handsome profile both well known and unfamiliar. His hair was dark and shoulder-length; a gemstone gleamed on one pale hand.
Had she met him before? Perhaps. So much of her memory was gone. Her passage through Dream; the Night Train; the sky-vessel of Norrowa; the court of Nethermost London; the singing tiger; the travelling girl; all these things were like images from a half-remembered dream, falling away as she opened her eyes into a different reality.
‘You must be the Hallowe’en King,’ she said.
He turned to her and smiled. ‘Must I? Then I suppose you must be right. Well met, Queen Orfeia,’ he said, and held out his hand in greeting.
But Fay did not take it; instead she watched in horror as he faced her, the illusion of beauty falling from his person like a garment. For the Hallowe’en King was handsome only in profile: one side of his body was that of a well-proportioned, fine-looking man, the other was shrunken and skeletal; and the hand he held out to greet her was nothing but a handful of bones under the rings of silver. One eye was dark as honeycomb in the living part of his face; the other shone blue as glaciers in a socket of burnished bone. For Death has two faces; the face of memory and Dream, which endure in spite of everything, and that of darkness and despair. And now Fay remembered the tailor bee’s words: Take nothing, not even a handshake from him, for if you do, you and your Daisy will stay in his kingdom for ever.
And so she smiled at the Hallowe’en King, and knelt to kiss the hem of his robe (making sure to keep to his living side), and said: ‘I come not as a Queen, my Lord, but as a humble supplicant. You have my daughter Daisy. I am here to plead for her return, just as she was taken from me.’
The Hallowe’en King gave his tilted half-smile. ‘It has been some time since Death surrendered one of its people. What do you have to offer me?’
‘Anything you want,’ said Fay.
The Hallowe’en King raised an eyebrow. ‘And what do I want, my Queen?’ he said. ‘I have everything my heart could desire. My kingdom is a thousand times greater than any realm that has ever been. I have wealth beyond the dreams of any lord of the living. I can see into every World; every antechamber of Dream. Whatever you have will one day be mine: every thought; every memory. Knowing this, how can you hope to seduce me into doing your will?’
The King was right, thought Fay to herself. She had nothing to offer him. And yet, the King in Alberon’s tale had managed to reach his cruel heart. She summoned a smile, although she felt very small, very wan in his presence. ‘Music is my currency,’ she said, remembering Alberon’s tale. ‘I can sing a song so gay that even the dust will stand up and dance. I can sing a song so true that even the dead will listen. Let me sing for you, my King, and if I can make you weep—’
‘I have heard this claim before,’ said the Hallowe’en King, with a smile. ‘That tale has been told, and the riddle, too. Such child’s play may have brought you here, but if you hope to win my favour, you cannot expect to do so with a tale that has been told a thousand times before.’
‘Oh,’ said Fay in a small voice.
The King went on, his golden eye shining with amusement. ‘But yes, my Queen, I know of your voice. And I do so love a challenge.’ He smiled again, and once more Fay saw both charm and horror in his smile. ‘Very well. You may sing for me. But I too am accounted to have something of a musical flair. You shall match my voice with yours in contest, and we shall see whose is the most eloquent. We shall sing three times, my Queen, and if you win, you shall have your way. But if I win’ – his blue eye glittered like ice – ‘then you shall stay here, in my realm, and share my throne for ever.’
Fay took no time to consider it. ‘Done,’ she said, and the Hallowe’en King put out his living hand to shake. ‘Have no fear,’ he said, seeing her pause. ‘This is no trick. The ruler of the Land of Death can never break their word, for fear that all the Worlds be thrown into chaos and disarray.’
Fay took his hand (it was long and cool and pale, and laden with many silver rings). ‘I agree to your bargain,’ she said. ‘If I win, my daughter goes back with me to the land of the living. If I lose, I stay here with you. Now let the contest begin.’
And at that, the King lifted his hand, and once more, the mournful scenery changed, and Fay found herself in a banqueting hall, filled with the trappings of the dead.
Four
At first glance, the banqueting hall was not unlike that of King Alberon. But where the court of London Beneath was lit with living torchflies, the cavernous hall of the Hallowe’en King was garlanded with foxfire. The ceiling was vaulted with fungi that shone with a ghostly greenish light, and the walls were alive with curlicues of bioluminescence. In its undersea light, she could see the bone-white throne of the Hallowe’en King, and among the pillars that lined the hall, she could see the ranks of the dead, standing there like an army of shadows. She could hear their voices, too: a kind of rushing, whispering sound, not unlike the sound of the sea. All sounds resemble the sound of the sea, when multiplied to infinity, and the gathered dead were like grains of sand endlessly shifting and moving, until the air was alive with the sound and the restlessness of their presence.
And now she could see that the hall was all bones: there were skulls lining the portals, and spines along the architraves, and set into the smooth pale polished floor was a mosaic of finger-bones. On the walls there were tapestries of rich and marvellous design, spun from the hair of a million dead, depicting scenes of dancing, and battle, and feasting and merrymaking. And, as in the court of King Alberon, there were tables laden with dainties from all the known Worlds: delicate fruits from Fiddler’s Green; sea urchins from Atlantis, served on a bed of luminous seaweed; flower-wines from Tír na nÓg; spiced pastries from Antillia.
Fay was so hungry she felt almost faint. But even so, she knew not to touch of the food of the Land of Death. Not a drop of wine, not a seed could safely pass between her lips. She looked neither left nor right as she passed between the laden tables, moving towards the end of the banqueting hall. Behind her, she heard the sounds of the tables with their tempting wares crumbling back into the dust, but she did not spare them a second glance, nor did she stop until she was standing at the foot of the throne, where the Hallowe’en King awaited her, flanked by two of his servants.
These servants were colourful creatures of indeterminate gender and race; one with extravagant purple hair, the other, in what seemed to be a mask adorned with blinking eyes. I’ve seen them somewhere before, thought Fay, but try as she might, she could not remember the circumstances of their meeting. The creature with the purple hair grinned, revealing a set of long, sharp teeth. The creature in the mask made a sound like someone scraping a violin, and Fay realized it wasn’t a mask, but the nightmarish face of an insect.
‘You mustn’t mind Cobweb and Peronelle,’ said the King with a lazy smile. ‘But entertainments such as this are few in the Land of Shadows.’
He gestured languidly towards Fay. ‘My Queen, I trust that this attire does justice to the occasion?’
Fay looked down at her clothing and saw that she was dressed in a beautiful gown of blue-green moiré, with gemstones clasped around her neck and cascading into her décolletage. The Hallowe’en King, too, had taken pains with his appearance. Gone was his skeletal aspect. His face was once more handsome
beneath his crown of dead man’s ivory; his form once more harmonious, his smile entirely charming. His cloak was made from ten thousand skins of the long-extinct Cloudrunner mink, and his boots were of dragonfly leather that reflected the undersea glow of the walls.
Fay met the Hallowe’en King’s eyes: one honey-golden; the other, ice-blue. ‘I prefer to keep my own clothes,’ she said, remembering what the tailor bee had told her in the caverns.
He shrugged. ‘Whatever my Queen desires.’
Fay found herself back in her hoodie, barefoot, her bare legs covered in scratches.
‘Thank you,’ said Fay. The Hallowe’en King seemed unmoved by the tartness in her voice. He smiled at her with deceptive charm, and with a wave of his pale hand, dismissed the scene around them. Gone now was the banqueting hall: instead, the hall of the Hallowe’en King had become a theatre, larger than any Fay had ever seen or imagined.
There were rows and rows of seats, reaching into the distance – stalls, dress circle, upper circles, many boxes and balconies – all upholstered in velvet as dark as blood, and gilded with the bioluminescence of the Underworld. Fay and the King were standing on the largest stage she had ever seen, with curtains that reached up to the ceiling vaults, and dizzying catwalks, and footlights like St Elmo’s fire, and many elaborate carvings of angels and dragons and mythical beasts, all gleaming with the strange energies of the Kingdom of the Dead. The audience was the ranks of the dead, remade by the King from the dust of the past. All of them pale and attentive; all in their finest evening dress. Moth and Peronelle were there, too, in the front row of the stalls, whispering behind their fans of spider silk and filigreed bone. The gleam of gems; the rustle of silks; the breathless hush of an audience awaiting a much-anticipated performance – all this was so familiar, and yet so very strange, that Fay was suddenly sure that she had never left London Before, that she was asleep and dreaming.
The Hallowe’en King smiled again, and Fay saw that he was holding a gilded harp that shimmered in the footlights.
‘This harp was made from the bones of a girl who died at the hands her lover,’ he said. ‘The strings were made from her golden hair, the crown from her skull, the pegs from her toes, the pedestal from her pelvis. It was fashioned by a craftsman long dead; a luthier whose name was once renowned across the Nine Worlds, and this instrument was the last of his work: the rest has long since gone into dust. What will serve to accompany you, my Queen, in our musical contest?’
Fay looked around. ‘I—’ she faltered.
The King’s smile broadened. ‘Brave of you to go unaccompanied,’ he said. ‘But I must trust that you are prepared.’
For a moment Fay was aware of her courage beginning to fail. But then she remembered the seashell in the pouch of her hoodie, and felt its reassuring weight against her lower belly. She held it out to the Hallowe’en King and summoned her brightest, bravest smile.
‘This will be my instrument,’ she said with a confidence she did not feel. ‘A conch from the shores of Norrowa, its music the voice of the ocean.’
The King’s smile did not falter, but the fingers of his living hand tapped an impatient rhythm against his throne of dead man’s ivory.
‘Then, my Queen, let us begin,’ he said in his smooth and gracious voice. With a languid gesture, the King summoned a bright, narrow spotlight, and Fay Orr lifted the shell to her lips and began to play for her daughter’s life.
Five
The shell had sounded like whalesong to her on the beach of Norrowa. In the hall of the Hallowe’en King, it sounded still more melancholy, still more mysterious and strange, and it made her think of the Night Train’s horn, as she heard it in Nethermost London. And, as its echo resonated across the auditorium, Fay raised her voice and started to sing a song from the days of her stage career.
It was the song of a woman who has given up everything she has; a song of broken dreams, lost hopes, and a mother’s enduring love. It had been a long time since she had sung it, and she was out of practice, but her voice had its own kind of memory. It soared into the waiting air; it torched the theatre vaulting into frantic luminescence; it stirred the innumerable dead like a forest of fallen leaves. In the front row, Moth and Peronelle leaned forward in their seats, lips parted, eyes glittering. But Fay sang only to the King. Half-turned towards him on his throne, she looked straight into his face and sang; and saw the sum of all her grief reflected in his living eye.
At the end of the song, there was applause just like the sound of waves of a beach, and the Hallowe’en King gave Fay a tiny nod of appreciation.
‘Brava, Queen Orfeia,’ he said. ‘Your voice is sweet as honeycomb. Now, my Queen, let us see what I can bring to this contest.’ And, lifting the gilded harp, he ran his living hand across the strings, and a strange and beautiful music filled the theatre of the dead.
It was like no harp Fay had ever heard. It sounded like a human voice, sweet and sad and far away, and when the King’s voice joined it, they made a single, perfect resonance. And the Hallowe’en King sang a song of love; of longing and of sorrow. It was a song about letting go of all the joys and dreams of Life; of sleeping next to a lover, a child, and knowing that happiness cannot last. The voice of the King was more resonant than any Fay had ever known; its tenderness was astonishing, its compassion endless. And at the end, the applause was like the raging of a storm, and Fay found herself almost in tears, and knew that he had won the round.
‘Now for your second song, my Queen,’ said the Hallowe’en King with a smile. ‘I’m sure you must have many more in your extensive repertoire.’
Fay did not answer, but looked at the boards as the spotlight moved back onto her. She could see that, in spite of the glare, her shadow was barely visible. And now, as she tried to think of a song, she realized that her memory, so rich with music a moment before, had vanished like a handful of dust. Not a lyric, not a tune could she recall from her West End days. The part of her that had trodden the boards, that had recorded albums, that had sung duets with Allan, that had picked up flowers on the stage and hung up costumes in dressing-rooms – all of that was gone for ever. Her career had been erased in the time it took her to sing one solo.
And now she had to do it again: and what might it cost her this time? Fay was aware she had already lost a significant part of her memory. Only a handful of fragments remained of her life in London Before, and yet, while there was breath in her, she would fight for Daisy’s life; and Death himself would not stop her.
And so she raised the shell to her lips and summoned the sound of the Night Train’s horn: then she sang to the Hallowe’en King the only scrap of melody that she could still remember:
My plaid away, my plaid away,
My plaid shall not be blown away.
The simple tune sounded out of place and strange in the cavernous theatre. Fay found herself very conscious of her bare legs under the hoodie; of grubby hands and her tangled hair; of the faces of the dead watching her, reflections in a mirror maze—
What am I doing here? she thought, and for a terrible moment she could not recall who she was, or why she was standing there in the spotlight. Looking down at the boards, she saw that she cast almost no shadow. Am I even here at all? And why is someone clapping?
She turned to see the Hallowe’en King, applauding her with a twisted smile. ‘A brave attempt, Queen Orfeia,’ he said. He had once more assumed his true aspect, and his dead eye shone like polished chrome as he picked up his instrument.
‘Your voice is sweet as ever,’ he said, ‘although your material lacks in range.’ And then he touched the strings of his harp with the skeletal fingers of his dead hand, and the theatre of the dead was filled with a terrible music. And the Hallowe’en King sang a song of pain, of sacrifice and suffering. His blue eye shone like starlight, and his voice was rich as blood. He sang of great loves gone to dust; of empires built and fallen; of long-abandoned philosophies and of gods reduced to children’s toys. And Fay looked up at the bo
ne-white throne and knew that the King had won the round, and that Daisy was lost to her, for ever, and without recall.
Six
The applause for the King’s performance went on for a long time. It could have continued for ever, had not the King dismissed it with a wave of his skeletal hand. At the gesture, his audience of the dead, in all their gems and finery, vanished back into the dust, and the great auditorium was left empty and echoing. Except for Moth and Peronelle, still standing by the front of the stage; their finery gone, their gowns transformed into scant and colourless rags.
‘I think we can do without them, don’t you?’ said the Hallowe’en King, and, with a gesture, he banished the pair. Then, turning again to Fay, he smiled; and although his smile was unbearable, she thought she saw in his one living eye something like compassion. ‘You fought a brave battle, my Queen,’ he said, ‘but Death always wins. You must know that.’ Still smiling, he held out his skeletal hand. ‘Come to me, Queen Orfeia, and you will learn that I can be kind. My kingdom has no limits. It can be anything you want it to be. Do you wish for company? I can give you handmaidens, entertainers, dancers, clowns. I can make the halls of Death ring with music and laughter. Are you hungry? I can bring you wines and fruits from every World. I can build you a library of a hundred thousand books; I can give you gardens filled with the most fragrant of flowers. Only stay, and rule at my side, and I will give you your heart’s desire.’
Fay looked for her shadow on the boards. For a moment she thought it had disappeared. But then she saw it – the tiniest, the most translucent shimmering, less than a heat-haze, less than the glimpse of a moth’s wing through gossamer – and knew that her task was incomplete. She still had something to bring to the fight, though what that was, she did not know. Playing for time, she looked up at the King, and said:
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