Seaward (8 page)

Westerly hesitated; then decided there could be no guile in a girl who could whistle like a boy. “Seaward,” he said.

“What?”

“To the sea.”

Cally looked up at him sharply. “So am I.”

“Then why are we going to this tower?”

“You're nearly there. Pull left. Now both. I don't know. I think I'm supposed to. Something somebody said—” She thought:
I can't tell him Ryan saw it in the tea-leaves.
“Stop. Here's the shore.”

Westerly turned, and they were both silent as they looked up at the tower. On its rocky base it reared up over them into the blue sky, vast, mysterious; they could see the outlines of the huge stone blocks from which it was made. Nothing stirred anywhere.

Westerly shouted suddenly, “Hey! Anybody home?”

His voice echoed back at them across the lake.
“Home . . . home . . . home. . . .”
No sound came from the tower.

“Let's have one of those oars,” Cally said. She poked it over the stern and pushed, and the dinghy nosed up on a
small sandy beach. They climbed out and pulled it clear of the water.

The sand of the beach was grey, filled with small white flakes that glittered in the sun. Broken branches and twigs littered the waterline. Westerly pulled his pack out of the boat and swung it up on his back; he looked at Cally striding long-legged up the beach with her own, and wondered what drew her to the tower. The urge to explore was strong in him too, but he felt a wariness beneath it, a sense that something perilous waited here.

Cally called over her shoulder, “There are steps!”

He caught up with her. The grey rock was like a cliff before them, but carved diagonally into it was a huge stairway, winding upwards, each step higher than his knee.

He reached one leg up to the first step. “Look at the size of them! Must have been made for a giant.”

Cally looked at him quickly, and he laughed. “Jack and the Beanstalk? Not really. Come on.”

They heaved themselves up the stairs, scuffling through dirt and sand and dead leaves. As the stairway curved, biting into the rock, its sides cut them off; they could see nothing but the rocky walls, the rising steps and a strip of sky overhead. Silence enclosed them.

Cally said, climbing, “That crack about Jack and the Beanstalk. . . . There
are
weird things in this place. Including giants —sort of.”

“I know there are,” Westerly said. He reached for the next step. “I just wasn't sure you did. No more cracks, okay?”

“Okay,” Cally said.

Then they were out in the air again, breathless, the wind loud in their ears; they were at the top of the steps, standing on a rough rocky platform, and before them was a massive stone door. It was set close against the granite blocks of the tower wall: a blue-grey slab of slate, straight-edged, smooth as paper.

Westerly considered it. “No handle, no door-knocker. No way in. Just a big chunk of slate saying Go Away.”

Cally stared at the door, disappointed. “Maybe I was wrong about the tower. Maybe we aren't supposed to go inside.”

In the same moment there was a deep rumbling, grating sound, and the tall slate door began to move sideways. They could feel it grinding against the rock beneath their feet. Caught in amazement they stood watching, until it stopped, leaving a gaping doorway with only darkness visible inside.

Nervously Cally took hold of Westerly's sleeve; but it was she who stepped forward. He said swiftly, “No!”

“Why not?” She was at the edge of the doorway, peering in; then she let go of his sleeve and said gaily, “Oh
look—”
and she was inside. At once the grinding rumble of rock began again, and the door started to slide back.

Westerly said in horror, “Cally!” For a paralysed instant he paused, staring at the moving door; then he dived after her and slipped inside. With an echoing crash the door shut behind them.

“Where are you?”

Then he saw that the tower was not dark. They stood in a square, high-ceilinged room walled with the same rough granite blocks, and in the middle of the room hung a strange white sphere, glowing with cold light. It hovered, shifting gently, like a great white ball held up by an invisible stream of air. But it was not hanging, and it was not held up. It was simply there.

Westerly gazed at it, fascinated; then moved slowly forward.

“Don't touch it!” It was Cally's turn to hold back. But before he was close, the ball seemed silently to explode, and the curious white light was all around them in the room like mist. They heard a new rumbling of stone, and before them on the far wall two tall stone slabs slid sideways, revealing two staircases. One led upward, the other down.

The slabs quivered and were still, and the room was silent again. The white mist all round them hovered about the gap in the wall, lapping at its edges.

Westerly peered into the blackness beyond. “Well, do we go up, or down?”

“Up sounds better.” Cally peered past him at the ascending stone steps; they disappeared round a bend. “Only—it's so dark.”

But as they stepped through the opening onto the stairs, the white mist poured after them, following, transforming the slanting stairway into a tunnel of white light. The stairs rose steeply; then suddenly the inner wall ended and they were in an open space like a kind of landing. The mist-light flowed out around them, and at either end of the landing wall they saw a heavy wooden door.

Westerly groaned. “Always doors. It's like one of those puzzles —a box in a box in a box.”

He looked for a handle on the nearest door, but again there was nothing; no sign anywhere of handle or keyhole or latch. Leaning his shoulder against it, he pushed hard, but the door did not budge. Baffled, he ran his fingers over the heavy time-rutted wood.

“It's ancient—look at those cracks. And cobwebs on the hinges . . . nobody's been through here for years and years.”

Cally was silent. He glanced at her; she was starring upward, her face tight and pale. She said huskily, “Look at that!”

Above the door, carved into the stone wall, dusty and worn with age, he saw the word: CALLIOPE.

Cally said, in the same strange husky voice, “I think I know how to get in.”

She held up both hands and put her palms against the surface of the wood, and instantly at her touch the heavy door swung quietly open.

The room was full of sunlight, pouring in through broad windows. One window was open, and white curtains shifted gently in the breeze. On three sides, smooth plastered walls were painted from floor to ceiling with a single unbroken picture: green water, white waves, a golden shore and a blue sky.

The fourth wall, in which the door was set, was full of books: the shelves too ran from floor to ceiling, and a neat white ladder was set beside them to put the highest books within reach. The floor was carpeted in soft gold wool, and beside the open window was a bed covered with a quilt patterned in bright flowers. A white chair stood at a desk made of light bleached wood, and in the mirror of a small dressing-table Westerly could see the reflection of the blue sky. He was not sure whether it was the sky outside the tower, or the sky painted on the walls.

He looked again at Cally's tense face. “Are you all right?”

Cally stood in the middle of the room. She said shakily, “When I was little, I always wanted my bedroom walls to be white, so that I could paint a mural all over them. A picture of the sea and the sky, with a sandy beach. I've never seen the sea—only pictures. . . . And I wanted a wall full
of shelves for all my books, and a desk like that one, and a mirror like—” She swallowed. “Is the frame of that mirror carved? “

Westerly crossed to look. “Yes,” he said, wondering. “Carved all round the edge, with little fishes, and flowers and leaves.”

Cally nodded. “And over here there's a closet, with a door you can't see.” With the slow, abstracted certainty of a sleepwalker she moved to the painted wall beside the bed, reached to a white curling wave and pulled at a ring her fingers found there, and a section of the mural swung out as a door. Inside, Westerly saw a closet filled with bright dresses, hanging in a row, and shelves of neatly folded blouses and scarves, with a rack of shoes underneath.

Cally reached up for a dress on a hanger. “There's the prettiest, the blue silk one, with the ribbon belt.” She looked at it for a moment, expressionless, then put it back.

Westerly said, “Is it a copy of your room at home?”

Cally stared at him. “Of course not. I've never seen anything like it. It's the room I dreamed about having. And everything in it. All the things I hoped I might have one day . . . some day. . . . There's my own bathroom too, behind another secret door in that wall.” She pointed, but did not move.

Westerly looked at her for a long moment. Then he went out of the room, back to the landing. The white
light-mist had retreated down the stairs, as if driven back by the sunlight; it lay in a pool, five or six steps down.

With Cally slowly following, Westerly crossed to the second of the two tall wooden doors. He looked up, and saw written over the lintel in the same worn, carved letters: WESTERLY. Glancing at Cally, he set his palms against the surface of the door and pushed.

The door did not open.

Cally said hesitantly, “That worked for me—but I think maybe you have to do something that's specially yours.”

“Hum,” Westerly said. He thought for a moment. Then he swung down the pack from his back, and took out a long knife. Cally recoiled a little as he pulled it from its sheath. As she watched, Westerly flicked the knife sharply forward so that the blade hung quivering in the age-worn wood of the door, and he said, low and fast, some words that she did not hear.

The door swung open and Westerly stepped through it—and disappeared.

C
ally stood staring at the open door. She could see nothing beyond it but a grey haze. There was no sign of a room; no outline of walls or ceiling or floor.
No floor. . . .

Anxiously she lunged forward, reaching for the door-jamb, with a sudden terrible image of Westerly stepping into space, falling the height of the tower to stone beneath. But a barrier met her, throwing her backward. It was as if she had come up against a glass wall; yet she had touched nothing solid, there was nothing there. Again she tried to move to the doorway, and again she was held back, powerless. She remembered how the Lady had been held, trying in vain to break through the force that kept her from Ryan's protected house, and she thought miserably:
but I don't mean any harm. . . .

There was no sound in the tower; the silence pressed in on Cally as if it had weight. Fear came trickling cold into her mind; she thought of the immense slate door below,
shutting out the world, and of the dark stair they had not taken, winding down into unknown depths. Would she dare go down there alone?

She called out desperately to the open door and the grey space, “Oh Westerly, come back!” There was only the silence swallowing her voice, and the light slanting out from the door of the room at the other end of the landing: the room with her name written over its door.

All at once that room seemed a refuge, beckoning her with its familiar dream-images. Cally turned and made her way slowly back to the other door, hearing her steps echo round the rough stone walls. She came into the glow of the sunlight beaming out from the room, and just as she was about to go in, she heard Westerly's voice behind her.

“Cally? You all right?”

She spun round, relief and fury tumbling over one another in her mind. “Where were you?”

Westerly came towards her, his pack slung over one shoulder. His dark hair was falling over his forehead; his brown face was unsmiling, preoccupied, as if part of him were a long way away. He said again, “You all right?”

“I'm fine.”

“How long was I gone?”

“Just a few minutes, I suppose. It seemed like a month. What happened?”

Westerly pushed his hair out of his eyes, and the look
of preoccupation left his face as if he had pushed that away too. He said suddenly, irrelevantly, “I'm
hungry.”

Cally remembered the bag Ryan had given her. “I've got some food.”

Westerly followed her into the sunlit room and stood in the middle of the floor, looking round at the sea-painted walls. He said slowly, as if he were feeling for words, “These rooms are dreams, I think. This one—you said it was everything you'd always wanted.”

Cally had found two thick sandwiches of meat and bread at the top of the pack; she held one out to him. “Yes. And nobody had ever known those things but me.”

Westerly sat down beside her on the broad window-seat and bit into his sandwich. “But where you came from, you did have a room of your own?”

Cally nodded, her mouth full.