Arcadia (61 page)

He'd rather sleep, though. Like everyone else.

He rests. The last point of consciousness in Pendurra fades out.

I
t's a bit like me,” says Gwen. “Burned to bits but all right on top.” She taps her head with her good arm.

They're up by the monstrously overgrown gate where Rory lied his way in. It's morning. The air smells of roses. They're all standing together, looking at the half-ruined cottage with the strange statue planted outside.

Rory's come to rather like Gwen. She's surprisingly funny. He doesn't think of her as the burned woman anymore, though even after drinking the water from the well she's horribly scarred all over her face and hands, and one of her arms is withered up to the elbow. She says she's already better on the inside. Iz said she'd be better on the outside too if she went to the pool but Gwen absolutely refuses to go there, for some reason.

“I don't think I'll be moving back in, though,” she says. “Did any of my poor books survive?”

“I haven't looked,” Iz says.

“And this,” Gwen says, limping towards the house, “must be Holly.”

“Clever clever,” Corbo croaks.

Rory's not startled when the tree statue moves. He ought to have known all along, really. She's the exact burnished green of holly leaves, and her face was always too watchful to be anything but alive. He even heard her humming; he just didn't want to admit to himself where the sound was coming from. Her branch-limbs untwist and she bows to Gwen. When she speaks it's like bells chiming.

“Worse than dead,” she says, “and yet by grace recovered. You wear your flesh more wisely than my once-master did, burned though it be.”

“Don't let's talk about that,” Gwen says.

“As you wish.” Holly bows again, this time with her head only. Her skull is crowned with tiny white flowers. “Forgetting is licensed here, and forgiving. For you too, liar.” She turns her red gaze on Rory. “And for myself. I have almost forgotten that I was once free.”

“Long time,” Corbo says.

“This is Rory,” Gawain says, resting a hand on his shoulder. “He belongs here as much as any of us.”

“I only lied 'cos of Silvia,” Rory says. “I was just trying to help her.”

“I make no accusation,” Holly says. “Was it not I who welcomed you first? Welcome again. The third boy-child to enter under my watch, and the last.”

“All finished,” Corbo agrees.

“I'd like a look inside,” Gwen says. She slurs her words; her lips don't move properly and one side of her face is shriveled, pulling her mouth out of shape.

Holly swings a limb towards the broken door. “This is a homecoming,” she says. “Everything returns.”

Gawain's still right beside Rory, so no one else hears him say “Almost everything.” Surprised by the bitterness in his whisper, Rory glances at him.

Gawain hasn't asked for the ring back. He hasn't said anything about it at all, though he's still wearing the slender silver chain around his neck, inside his shirt like he's pretending he's still got it. The ring's in Rory's trouser pocket.

“Can someone give me a hand?” Gwen says, approaching the jumble of smashed wood which is all that remains of the entrance to the cottage. Iz steps forward, and the sisters pick their way inside together, leaving the rest of them standing by Holly. It's the beginning of a mild autumn day, or at least that's what it feels like: the air and the trees are autumnal, the light's a morning light. How days and seasons actually pass here Rory wouldn't like to say.

Silvia folds her arms and comes close to Gawain. “Something is bothering you,” she says.

Gawain acknowledges her with a look but doesn't answer.

Silvia gives him one of her intense stares. “Here there is no trouble, only peace. But not for you.”

“Girl trouble,” Corbo says.

Gawain sighs. “Don't you miss anyone, Silvia?” He waves at the wall of thorns. “Anyone out there?”

“I learned not to,” she says. “After your mother left me. I taught myself, no more love, no more pain. All I wanted is to find her again. No one else. Now that's done . . . No.”

“The gypsy is wise, once-boy.”

“You know what kind of world it is beyond,” Silvia says. “Or maybe you don't, if you were on a boat for a year. But I do. I saw enough of it. I'm ready for grief.”

Again Gawain doesn't answer. From inside the cottage comes the sound of the sisters talking, Gwen laughing painfully.

“When I was talking to Rose,” Rory says, “she said that's what it used to be like in here.”

Gawain and Silvia are suddenly both paying attention to him. Holly too, as far as he can tell.

“At peace, I mean. Everyone was happy. That's what she said. She said it was hidden away, no one knew this was a special place so it was sort of forgotten. She was talking about The Old Days. You know. Before magic and stuff.”

Gawain studies Rory.

“Do you remember,” he says, “when we spoke to my mother in the night?”

“Yeah.”

“The last thing she said before she went. She said we ought to make what you call the old days come back again. Remember that?”

“Is that what she meant?”

Gawain nods. “One of the things she meant.”

Silvia looks confused. “Your mother?”

Rory doesn't want to try explaining. “You mean go back to when magic was only here and no one else knew?”

“I think so,” Gawain says. “Return the gift. Refuse it. That's what she was talking about.”

“You have this power?” Silvia says.

“Yes,” says Gawain.

“You can lose your gift? Like me?”

“Hide it away,” Gawain says. “Like Rory just said. For hundreds of years magic lived on here when it was nowhere else. Some people must always have known, I suppose, but no one would have believed them anyway. We could do that again. Finish all our stories here. In this enchanted garden, hidden away from the rest of the world.”

“And everyone inside happy,” Rory says, remembering Rose's words.

Gawain nods towards the cottage. “Like them. They don't want to be anywhere else. They're ready for grief too. God knows they've earned it. You'd all be all right here. You too, Rory. There's no disease here, no one goes hungry, the house'll always be fine. We could let everything go back to how it used to be.”

“Except,” Corbo says.

“Ah,” Holly sighs. “Except. One place sits empty at the homecoming.”

“Yes,” Gawain says. “Except without Marina.”

  *  *  *  

They're back in the hall that's like a church, sitting around one end of the long table. There's food in big heavy dishes, baked squash with honey, some kind of chewy yellowy bread which is incredibly delicious, pears, blackberries. No one's eating much.

“She didn't belong here, Gav,” Iz says. She's gone back to looking like she'll never laugh again. She clasps her hands tightly together. “It's not her place. She couldn't manage it.”

Gawain's expression is the most miserable of the lot, which is saying something. Since they started talking about Marina it's like winter has entered the house.

“Couldn't you have brought her home?” he says, so dully it's hardly even a question. He already knows the answer. He's given up.

“I would have. I should have!” Iz reaches for Gawain's hands, hesitates, holds back. “I didn't understand about her until it was too late.”

“So what happened to her?”

Iz shakes her head. “I can't say it. I can't. Her mother took her in the end, that's all that matters. She was all right then. Gav, I promise. They held each other like this.” Iz wraps her fingers around each other. “She went where she was supposed to be.”

For a while now Rory's had the feeling he's got something he needs to tell them, but he doesn't know when or how to say it. The adults are all ignoring him. They're watching Gawain, nervously.

“I always knew,” Gwen says. “We all did. It was always going to happen one day. We had this lovely fantasy, Tristram and I, that our lives would go on forever, but we were fooling ourselves. Year by year, the older she got, you could see more of her mother in her. She's better as she is. Honestly, Gav dearest. She must be.”

Rory remembers:
Where I used to live there was a room which was wider and higher than your whole house.

“I'm certain of it,” Iz says. “She's safe in the sea. Completely safe.”

Rory remembers:
I want you to be safe with me. Where it's always quiet.

“I watched what happened to her mother,” Gwen says. “She loved Tristram more than I've ever known anyone love anyone, but she couldn't stay with him. She had to go back. They're not the same as us.”

Them Them Them. I wonder why They hate us so much.

Silvia's angry. She doesn't like the way Iz and Gwen are talking. “You think this boy is finished with his life?” She means Gawain. “Like you, like me? When he's not even a man yet?” She turns to Gawain and speaks more gently. “I see your face when you think about her. You can't just forget. I think what you want is to leave this place, go and look for this girl.”

Iz is shaking her head. “She chose the sea, Silvia. She's gone.”

“You say this? You? Who sat in that chair in this room, a year, two years, waiting for him?”

“This is Gav's home,” Iz says quietly. “Marina went to hers.”

“The thing is,” Gawain says, interrupting before Silvia can come up with an impatient response, “I made a promise.”

Everyone looks at him.

“To her, in fact. The day I left her. The hour. The minute. I was standing on the step outside the front door. I told her, the next time I entered Pendurra again I'd never leave.”

“You left her alone?” says Silvia.

“Try to imagine,” Gwen says. “This was the only place she'd ever seen. I mean
ever
. For thirteen years she'd never been out the gate. She couldn't. How could anyone think of taking her away from here?”

“A girl of thirteen? And you leave her by herself? In this house? It's like a tomb for a child.”

“Believe me,” Iz says, though Silvia's shaking her head. “It would have been so much better for her if she'd stayed here.”

“How can I break a promise?” Gawain says.

“Does it matter so much?” Silvia's unimpressed with everyone now.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, it does. I can feel it in my mouth. It's the same with everything I say. I can feel how it needs to be true.”

Gwen's sitting next to him. Her hands aren't much better than twisted claws, but she pats his arm. “I think you must have known what you were promising,” she says. “Even if you didn't realize it at the time. You knew you'd have to let her go.”

“It's done, Gav,” Iz says. “She won't come back. She tried the world and found out what it's really like out there. She wouldn't even talk to me at the end.”

“Marina?” Gwen says. “Wouldn't talk?”

No one smiles. “A horrible thing happened to her,” Iz says. “She changed. She was so like her mother when she left me. She didn't care at all. Like the sea.”

Rory remembers:
They hurt me inside and out, one after another.

Gwen's still holding Gawain's arm, gently persuading. “Swanny loved Tristram like, I don't know. Like her own life, you'd have thought. But you saw what she did to him in the end.”

“Killed him,” Gawain says.

“Took him to the sea.” Gwen's not correcting, just finding another way of saying it. “They're not like us, the mermaids. Even their love is merciless. I watched Swanny and Tristram try. Her mother and father. It was so awful. They wanted so much to find a way to be together but it's the sea and the land, isn't it? There's no overlap. We thought Marina might grow up half and half but you can't be half this and half that, not when they're opposites.”

Rory remembers:
My father was a man. I never told you that, did I?

Silvia sits back from the table. “He loves this girl,” she says, looking between Gwen and Iz. “I can see it in his face.”

“There's nothing he can do,” Gwen says, “even if he wanted to. No one could find her in the sea.”

Gawain closes his eyes in pained resignation.

“You're here now, Gav love,” Iz says, nodding. “It's all finished. You've reached your end and she reached hers. She's all right now. That's the only thing that matters, isn't it? She's where she's supposed to be. Like the rest of us.”

There's a long silence.

Rory shifts in his seat. No one else is going to say it for him, so he might as well get it over with.

“Actually.” He spins his plate on the table, trying not to notice that they're all suddenly looking his way. “I think I might know where you can find her.”