The Kind Folk (25 page)

Perhaps he'll be able to relax once he has finished reading Alvin Page, and he conjures up
The End of Magic
on the screen. The material has begun to seem familiar, like a collection of tales told long ago—tales of the Fair Folk, the Good Folk, the Kind Folk, the Children of the Moon, the Folk of the Moon, the Fair Ones and the malicious tricks that were part of their nature. The notion that their sign can be found in paintings as early as prehistory doesn't surprise him any more, and he can live with the idea that some luminaries may have been changelings, Spenser and Shakespeare among them. He skims the chapter about the last gift; he doesn't need to be reminded of that—it's already deep in him. Then a phrase snares his attention: "the purpose of the Gift". It has sailed upwards almost out of sight before he grasps it, and he takes a long breath as he drags it back.

It's the beginning of a quote from Roland Franklyn. "The purpose of the Gift was never simply to infiltrate the upstart race, but rather to draw upon those powers the human mind never suspects itself of containing: the shared and most secret unconscious. As the Folk wither and grow senile with the dwindling of magic, so they seek to add human strength and stability to their lineage. Having bestowed the Gift, they take not just the child whose place it has assumed ..."

Perhaps only nervousness makes Luke's fingers feel unfamiliar, scarcely capable of wielding the control. He's suddenly certain that Sophie read as far as this, and the rest as well. As he scrolls down he has a sense of dredging the secret up from a depth where it ought to have remained hidden. "... they take not just the child whose place it has assumed but any hybrid that the union of Gift with human may produce. Some they seize from the cradle, but human years are less than a breath to the Folk. Many a vanished child or grown youth has been borne away to mate with them and dwell with them in their secret lairs, reverting to the ancient fluency of shape..."

In the midst of the clamour of Luke's thoughts one seems even more urgent: he told Sophie that he didn't believe this before he knew what it was. His mind feels close to losing its boundaries, and he struggles to bring it under some kind of control. He's staring at the screen when his mobile breaks into his birthday song. The sentiment is anything but welcome, and Sophie is on the phone. "I haven't woken you, have I?"

"I was awake." He feels as if the onscreen revelation is responsible. "Don't bring anything," he blurts. "Just lock the car and come up."

If this is a bid to deal with his fears by reducing them to banality, it's important in itself as well, and he dresses as fast as he can before dashing to meet Sophie on the stairs. For a dreadful moment he has the impression that she's carrying their unborn child in front of her like a sacrifice. She doesn't know that, and he vows she'll never have a reason. She's carrying a Frugo bag of groceries in each hand, which lets him pretend this is all that's wrong. "Why have you brought those?" he protests and grabs them. "You could have waited till I was awake to go with you."

"I'm not an invalid, Luke. I want to do as much as I can for as long as 1 can."

"You don't want to risk little Maurice," Luke says and feels atrociously dishonest; if anyone's responsible for endangering their child, he is. "I'm sorry," he makes haste to add. "I know you wouldn't really. I know you."

"You can say that about yourself as well."

"That's me, an echo."

"You know what I mean, Luke," she says fiercely enough for impatience. "And I'm sure your test results will bear me out when you get them."

"They're here."

Sophie looks away from inserting her key in the lock. "And I'm right, aren't I?"

"They say I'm all you'd want me to be."

"Then that's the end of your worries, Luke."

He feels as if she's repeating his name as a charm to conjure up her version of him. She's silent until he plants the supermarket bags on the kitchen table, and then she says "Am I going to see your results?"

He can't recall whether he took the Arcane Archive off the screen, which has grown as black as a plot of earth. He hurries ahead of Sophie and reactivates the monitor. It's showing only the Frugonet homepage, and he retrieves the email. "There," he says and waits for her to sit at the desk. "You stay here. I'll fetch whatever needs fetching."

He's barely out of the apartment when he grows nervous over leaving Sophie on her own. Surely their child isn't in danger until it's born. He hurries to the basement and hauls the three remaining bags out of the Clio. Suppose he has another reason to be apprehensive? Would she ever check the history of his online searches, perhaps because he has left her at the computer with not much else to do? He tramps upstairs while the supermarket bags surround him with an incessant rustling that suggests he has companions as thin and desiccated as they're unseen. Sophie is in the kitchen making coffee, and the computer is switched off. "You've time for breakfast, haven't you?" she says. "You must have."

He would like to think she's no more eager for him to be on his way than he is. "I ought to have more time for you," he says.

"You will when it really matters, Luke."

"I should at least let all the bookers know I may have to cancel at short notice."

"You've already kept a month free when he's due. You don't want to start anybody wondering if you won't show up."

At once Luke sees that she's right, although not in the way she imagines. He needs to go where he has been invited—where the Folk will be waiting for him. He needs to confront them, to do whatever's necessary to protect the child. "Well," Sophie says, "you look as if that's given you a new lease of life."

They breakfast late enough to call it lunch, and then Luke drives south. The Clifftop Theatre is near Bristol and, more important, close to Ten Steps Cliff. During the several hours the drive takes, he keeps recalling Terence's tale of the steps that lead to the lonely pebble beach—just ten steps to climb while you heard the sea grinding its teeth, and then the same steps while you realised you weren't hearing pebbles grind together, and the identical ascent towards the cliff top that seemed never to come any closer as the waves swept the vast black maw onto the beach, where it would gape in anticipation of your exhausted fall... Luke can imagine how the Folk would delight in this as well as feasting on the power of the location. He doesn't bother asking the manager why she has booked him; he's sure he knows. Afterwards she's extravagantly grateful that he put on such a show, half an hour longer than she expected, and he tells her that the audience was so enthusiastic he didn't want to bring it to an end, though they weren't the spectators he was anxious to engage. There was no sign of an intruder in the auditorium, and there's none in the car park under the crumbling grin of the moon. It seems as though the Folk have lost interest in him—as though their attention is somewhere else.

THE VISITOR

"If I'm home before you are, shall I come and find you at the studio?"

"Don't rush back, Luke. I'd rather know you're safe."

"I want to be sure you are."

"What's going to happen to me at a recording session? Unless little Maurice decides to join in with a dance."

"Is he more active, are you saying?"

"He's full of life all right. He keeps letting me know he's there."

"Are you saying he's about to put in an appearance? Because if that's what you think—

"I'm sure he'll be a while yet. Don't let him put you off your performance tonight."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I don't know who else would have any idea what's going on inside me. even you, Luke."

"Somebody could. The hospital, I mean."

"I can't imagine I'll need them for weeks. If I should need anyone, which I'm certain I won't, I can always call my parents."

"Or maybe even stay with them while I'm away."

"Even that if I have to, except I know I won't. Honestly, I'll be fine on my own, well, I won't be that, of course."

"This is the last time I'll stay away overnight till, as long as it has to be."

"You shouldn't disappoint your public, though. Seems like there's nowhere they aren't after you, doesn't it? Still, maybe I'll be glad when you stop ending up where Terence did."

"There won't be too much more of that, I promise. You said yourself I shouldn't cancel any bookings till I absolutely have to."

"So long as that's all they mean to you. It is now, isn't it?"

"Do we even need to talk about it any more?"

"You're right, we ought to be on our way. I'm due at the studio in half an hour. I'll call you tonight and tell you how things are shaping up."

This is among the remarks that repeat themselves in Luke's head as he drives to Somerset. The journey leads him along a motorway that eventually leads onto another, which takes some hours to reach a third. Whenever the traffic grows sluggish it feels as if the August heat has weighed it down, though Luke could imagine that the Folk have caused the delay with one of their haphazard acts of malice. Cars with raised bonnets gape beside the road. Often the only hindrance proves to have been a matrix sign that said there was slow traffic, so that Luke wonders if the Folk can tamper with the electronic messages.

At last the motorway brings him to the road that winds west through Somerset. It's flanked by fields and hills, an English landscape of countless paintings and tourist posters, but the undulations make him feel as though the peaceful countryside is growing restless, incapable of holding down whatever may slumber beneath it. Distant spires are dwarfed by ponderous white clouds, and the churches look too small to have much weight—just tokens of human beliefs far younger than the world. Can Luke see all this because his mind is reverting to its true nature? If that has to happen so that he can intercede on behalf of Sophie and their child, surely he shouldn't resist it. He might even try to summon the Folk while he's driving if this didn't seem too dangerous; having one of them in the car while it was parked was distracting enough. "I'm coming to you," he says in a voice that sounds less than entirely familiar. "Wait for me."

He's hours along the road but well short of the coast when he arrives at Cranstone, a town surrounded by a coronet of low hills. Most of the houses are as white as the clouds the hills are holding back. All the windows are crisscrossed with lattices, and even the Frugotel on the outskirts appears to be trying to fit in. The courtyard beyond the stone wall is cobbled like the streets, and the windows of the concrete mansion are so thoroughly latticed that the architect might have been trying to cross out its youthfulness. The interior keeps up a pretence of the palatial—thick carpets, heavy furniture, wall lamps that imitate in miniature the lamps on brackets in the streets—until Luke reaches his room, which proves to have no windows, just a painting of the vista outside that confronts him when he draws the curtains back. He mistakes the bathroom for a wardrobe, and the furniture sounds hollow when he knocks on it. He booked one of the inexpensive rooms but didn't expect it to be quite so cheap. He isn't about to complain; it will do for his purposes. The lack of a window won't exclude any visitors he needs to invite.

He showers and changes and drives along one of the few unpedestrianised streets to the far side of town. The delays on the motorway haven't left him much time before his performance. The Woodland Theatre overlooks the fringes of a wood. Though the place isn't mentioned in Terence's journal, it wouldn't be the first time Luke has seen the Folk in trees. "Don't miss my show tonight," he mutters. "You'll be in it one way or another."

The manager is Archie Banton, an extravagantly red-bearded man in a white suit that suggests he's leaving room in case his tremendous body has a last surge of growth. "Just water?" he says in disbelief if not pique. "You're staying in Cranstone, aren't you?"

"I want to keep my head clear," Luke says, which is certainly the truth, and doesn't even ask why Banton booked him. Mentioning his imminent fatherhood earns him just a partial smile not unreminiscent of a shrug before he heads for the auditorium. While the seats aren't raked, they're staggered so that all of them except the front row have a view of the stage between the pair in front. Behind the back row is a wide aisle, on the far side of which a pair of exit doors gives onto the car park bordered by the forest. Luke thinks intruders should find it inviting, but even once the lights dim there's no sign.

He can only try another version of the trick he's been playing onstage for over a week. He talks about how kind folk are, the folk we're supposed to think are kind. His portrayals of relentlessly helpful relatives earn him a good few laughs of recognition, and so do the folk who address the disabled like children or become effusively friendly whenever they meet a member of a different race. None of this brings him the response he's desperate to provoke. He's reduced to reminding the audience how many things seem to go wrong for no reason, as if the fairies are playing pranks—fairies or some other bunch of meddlers just as idiotic. Some of the spectators appear to be more puzzled than amused by his depiction of the folk responsible—the creature in charge of mislaying car keys, the one whose job it is to delete material from computers and cameras and mobile phones, the miscreant that spends its entire protracted life in hiding half a pair of socks and then another... The only word for the breed is losers, Luke suggests, but this doesn't prompt much laughter. He wins back the audience to some extent with his increasingly manic impressions of victims of the frolics, but how is that helping his real aim? He's inspired, if that's the word, to make Brittan interrogate the pranksters, bewildering as many members of the audience as it entertains without achieving what he hoped it would. The spectacle of Brittan overcome by tics and jabbering in an attempt to continue his presentation while searching his pockets for keys and his phone for lost elements does save Luke's act to some extent, so that he manages to end in the midst of mirth. He stares towards the exit in case the lights flush out a lurking spectator, but nothing of the kind betrays its presence, and he wonders how many people think he's glaring at their departure. "Well," Archie Banton says as Luke encounters him in the backstage corridor, "that was alternative and no mistake."