Heaven's Bones (42 page)

Sophie in her turn pulled the Angel into an embrace, drawing her dreadful head down on her shoulder.

“The sea,” she whispered into her ear. “There.” She released the Angel and pointed.

Over the cliffs to the treacherous Cornwall shore, where ships had broken up as soon as there were ships in England. Over the cliff to the rocks that jutted out of the water like a drowned titan's broken teeth.

She spoke to all the Angels, who strained close to hear.

“Fly out to sea,” she commanded. “Over the cliff and onto the rocks. Let the sea swallow you.”

“Let the sea swallow us.”

With one accord the Angels rose and took wing, each by each, flying with grim determination where Sophie pointed. The Angel
with the baby, the sewn mouth, flew last, pausing to cup Sophie's cheek in her hand.

“Thank you,” she whispered, before she flew upward with powerful beats of her wings, flying to the sea and oblivion.

Sophie stood watching until they vanished.

She was startled by a groan. Alex stirred, tried to rise, and fell. She dashed to his side.

“Stay still, you fool. You'll hurt yourself worse.”

“You'll have to catch the horses, Sophie,” commented Cecelia from where she lay.

It hurt to do it, but she couldn't help it: Sophie laughed, and Cecelia laughed, and Alex looked with glowering wonder at the fool women and their frivolity.

Someone at the Cliffside, a refugee from the slaughter at St. Agnes, perhaps, would have been startled to see the flight of Angels over the Cornwall cliffs. Perhaps they crashed on the rocks, perhaps they were devoured by the hungry sea, but it was impossible to know, because a tremendous mist had risen off-shore, an unnatural, yellow mist, all wrong for this season, and they flew right into it.

The mist seemed to swell upon itself, and then dissipated, inch by inch. When it was gone, there was no sign of the Angels.

Sometimes, in the years to come, someone wandering the shore at low tide would find a fragment of metal, a thin piece of tin, perhaps, shaped a little like a feather.

Henry Thorpe was at the end of his strength. The river's current was stronger than it looked, an all-but-irresistible force under the deceptively tranquil surface, and he was pulled back two strokes for every one he made.

His legs were heavy; his entire body seemed made of lead, and his arms ached dreadfully with the effort of keeping him afloat. His head kept slipping under the surface and his mouth filled with water.

The setting sun struck the skin of the river as he sank, making it sparkle with all manner of autumn jewel-tones: ruby and orange and topaz-yellow. It was beautiful and clean: The river washed away all dirt and sin, while in that nightmare house stewed filth and evil.

Her hands … her hands were on me … better to drown than to have her hands on me
.

And then he swallowed river-water and began to drown in earnest.

He was flailing, sinking, his vision darkening at the edges while at the center gleamed the bright mosaic of the water's surface, so close and so far away. Somewhere in the panicked cacophony inside his head was a kernel of peace, the balm of the drowned as death became inevitable, the small voice saying
peace, be still. It is better like this
.

The water's pull was not so forceful. He had drifted into the lee of a boulder that jutted up from the bedrock midstream. For a time,
the relentless current was blocked, and Henry was able to kick his legs freely, and his arms didn't seem as desperately heavy.

Galvanized, he kicked with newfound strength, ignoring the ache in his shoulders and the cramps in his calves. He propelled himself upstream, and once out of the sheltering shadow the boulder made in the stream, he persisted, remembering to alternate arm strokes, remembering to breathe, until after an eternity his fingers brushed the grass sprouting along the shore and he was able to hook his hands into the mud and pull himself, his shoulder joints screaming with the effort, halfway out of the stream and lie, spent, on the mire that bedded the river's edge.

Half of his face was buried in the mud and the sun beat down on the other, but it wasn't the blinding heat of noon. The rays of the setting sun warmed his cheek and his right ear, and half his forehead. The left ear was buried and he could hear uncountable creatures moving, and hatching in the mud, and feel them moving against his skin—worms and tiny reptiles, and insects winged and unwinged, strange little living jewels under the surface of the earth. The thought occurred to him that if he listened carefully he could hear the song they sang as they hatched and grew and ate each other, and that inside that song were secrets he'd never imagined, although he'd spent his life trying to find them out.

His legs were still in the river; he was too exhausted to drag himself farther up the bank. But now the current only seemed interested in playing with him, in pulling his legs gently to and fro, as a kitten plays with the tail of a friendly dog.

He fancied he could hear the river breathing inside its banks, and beneath that the low, slow heartbeat of the world itself—this strange world, at once familiar and alien, made from the sundering and patchwork of other worlds but still its own self, seeded from something that his own reality could never know.

Henry knew he should force himself to his knees and run, away
from this river, away from this house. But he was weak as a kitten, his muscles spent rubber, and the only balm he wanted now was the warmth of the sun and the song of the earth beneath him.

Through closed eyelids he sensed the sun blotted out as someone leaned over him. He struggled to rise to his knees, to open his eyes at the least.

A hand like a steel trap closed over the back of his neck, lifted his head momentarily, then plunged him facedown into the mud.

In sheer panic he managed to lift his weakened arms and grasp at the wrists of his attacker. Mud filled his nostrils and sharp, colored shafts of light shot through the darkness. His lungs ached for air.

The grip on the back of his neck shifted and his assailant lifted his head out of the mud by his hair. Henry gasped and blinked until his vision was clear.

Crouched before him, still holding up his head with one hand, was a burly man, red-complexioned with disconcertingly clear blue eyes. Weldon.

But who could that
creature
—hardly even a woman—be?

Weldon grinned at Henry's expression and with a flex of his massive arm he plunged Henry's face back down into the mud. Henry tried to strike out but he missed and heard Weldon chuckle.

This time the grip on the back of his head lasted longer and Henry's mouth started to fill with silt. His nose was filled with it already and it felt like his body was screaming, begging for one breath of air. He hadn't the strength to fight anymore; he tried to move but couldn't, his body seized with a paralysis like the nightmare twilight of sleep, when the mind is aware but the body will not move, whatever phantasms might haunt the corners of the room.

Now I'm going to die, he thought, and there was no peace to it as he had felt drowning in the clean water of the river, only the
bitter ashy taste of disappointment and despair. I'm going to die at the hands of a madman, far from home.

With a twist he was flipped on his back, the sucking mire giving up its grip reluctantly. He blinked at the sun while someone's fingers—Weldon's—cleared out the mud from his mouth with a brutal, expert motion. Henry sucked in the air, sweet for all the decayed stench of the mud and the things that hatch in it.

Finally he was able to push himself to his knees, coughing and choking on the mud that was left. He rubbed the dirt from his eyes with the filthy sleeve of his coat and blinked at the man who stood over him, whose head blocked the setting sun, giving him an incongruous fiery halo.

Henry was painfully aware that with little effort Weldon could shove him back into the mud, or kick him back into the river that lapped at his heels.

Weldon smiled.

“I see you've met my wife, young Thorpe,” he said, complacently. “And I must say you were
most
rude to the lady.”

Weldon crouched again, his deceptively bland face uncomfortably close.

“But I think there's a way you can make it up to her. I think she'd appreciate a most beautiful set of wings.”

No
, Henry mouthed.
No, I won't
.

But no sound came out.

Weldon grasped the front of his shirt and lifted him easily. Tossing Henry's limp body across his shoulder, he turned and walked toward the house. Henry stared at the glittering surface of the river, taunting him now.

Why didn't I drown when I had the chance?

Someone was standing there, someone who hadn't been there before. Weldon squinted. At the bank where he'd dragged himself out, where Weldon had plunged his face into the mud, stood a
slim figure. It shimmered in the glare of the sun, but it looked like a girl, almost grown to womanhood. Here eyes were dark and her skin coffee-colored.

She shook her head sadly.

Mist, faint at first but thickening like curdled milk began to rise from the ground. He could smell it, icy and sulfurous and cloying all at once. The mist enveloped him, enveloped Weldon, who didn't abate his pace. It obscured all, the girl, the river, the trees, and he knew it was doing the same to him: he was erased, forgotten, buried inside layers of fog. It was as if he, Henry Thorpe, dreamer and would-be inventor, never had been at all.

He began to weep.

Robarts was lost. He couldn't find Bryani House, although he knew it should be right here. The strange fog had him confused and ground that should look familiar was strange and foreign.

But he could hear the sea, beating against the distant cliffs. The sea was eternal.

Houses loomed out of the mist. He must be in St. Agnes Town.

That's right—St. Agnes. He must have made his way over the heather, by half-obscured paths to the little village. He was looking for someone.

Except he couldn't remember who.

“Margaret?” he called, but his voice fell flat in the fog. No one answered, and he saw no one in the streets. “Margaret? Are you here?”

He paused, frowning. Who was Margaret?

He'd reached the place where the two main roads crossed. The ground had been torn, and there were two great black stains on the hard-packed earth.

He kneeled and touched the nearest. The ground was damp, and his fingers came away red and sticky.

He called again, knowing there would be no answer.

Blood. Blood on the ground, and … something else about blood. It was a name, wasn't it? Blueblood?

Somebody had been hurt here. Finding a handkerchief in his pocket and wiping his fingers, he crossed to the nearest cottage and knocked on the door. It swung open at his touch, and, calling first, he ventured inside.

There was nobody inside. There was nothing inside: no furniture, no sign of life, no detritus, no dust. The walls were as white as if they'd been new-plastered. The place was as hollow as an empty eggshell.

He left the house and walked past the bloodstains, and his foot struck something he hadn't seen before.

Robarts bent to pick it up. It was a knife, a queer antique thing. He examined the patterns on its hilt. They were intricate, well crafted, but oddly unattractive. Without being themselves obscene, they gave the impression of uncleanliness.

Traces of blood remained at the base of the blade. He peered closer. The abstract figures were familiar; he'd seen something like them before. Something in a book, a book in a library, the library at Bryani House.

He'd almost forgotten about Bryani House.

He dropped the knife in his coat pocket. St. Agnes was abandoned; there was no help here, and he must get to Bryani House before this fog grew thicker. It looked to be almost pouring out of the ground now, thick and corporeal.