The Light Ages (64 page)

‘Don’t the new guilds sometimes ask … ?’

‘We always refuse. No more of those dreadful dark green vans, eh? Oh, I know there are still wraiths and wanderers out there. There probably always will be.’

‘There’s a Child of this Age lives on that bridge they never finished down on Ropewalk Reach past the wastetips in the Easterlies.’

‘She’ll be scavenging for aether, which is the worst possible thing. Or people like you will bring her the stuff for the few tricks she can probably play.’

‘Or money.’

‘Well, that’s almost as bad. But we’re an open house here at Einfell. You should tell Niana that, next time you see her. We’ll accept anyone, and we let them leave again if that’s what they wish. Like the—’ Only the slightest of hesitations. ‘Edward Durry. He sometimes comes and goes.’

‘You called her
Niana,
Anna. You must have—’

‘I’ve
heard
of her, that’s all, Robbie. I don’t need to read your mind to know what you’re thinking. I never have. It’s always been there on your face. And there are tales and rumours, just as always, in this Age of Light. I simply make it my business to listen to them, distasteful though they often are, and to winnow out the truth.’

Winnow.
The thought sends me tumbling back. The scent of cornfields. Snowlight streaking across a window. My hand cupping Anna’s cheek. Einfell. I know now. It was then, it was there.

She stood up. ‘And I’m sorry. I truly am …’ This time, she didn’t hold out her hand. I stood up as well. Sere and plainer and more beautiful than any magic, daylight flowered around her. ‘Well … Goodbye.’

And the door was in front of me. Almost, it seemed to open of its own accord.

‘Oh, Robbie?’

Quickly, I turned. ‘Yes?’

‘This cheque—I assume it’s still all right for us to keep it? I mean, we do need the money.’

‘Of course. Keep it all.’

And I was in the corridor. The door had closed.

N
IANA IS MORE REMOTE FROM ME NOW.

‘So,’ she preens, minces, curls, snarls, becoming more and more of the thing she thinks I want her to be. ‘The famous Anna Winters has heard of me and disapproves. She’d have me in sickroom cell learning my vowels and clauses and how not to scare people.’

‘She’s not like that, Niana.’

The night of this ruined bridge presses down on us. For once, Niana has no reply.

‘People can be so uncaring, can’t they?’ she mutters eventually. ‘Yes. And they can be so kind.’

‘And there’s the greatest mystery of all.’

We fall silent again, shocked by how much we suddenly have in common.

‘Well, grandmaster. You can’t stay forever.’

‘No …’ My bones ache as I stand up, and the boards of this rough nest sway and sparkle as they slope away from me. But I still don’t want to go home, even if I could ever find such a place.

‘Tell you what, grandmaster.’ Once more, Niana sweeps down to rummage in one of her teachests. ‘Let me give you this. Oh—don’t say no. Just a little. I think you of all people know what to do with it.’

Money. Real money. Several notes which would probably buy an aether vial.

‘But not that.’ She almost takes it back from me.

And I’m moving out across the stanchions and walkways which have grown oily with London mist. The foetid river. Then the wastetips, their buried stink clouding the night. Soon, I reach the dim lights of the Easterlies. The sounds of dogs and babies. The reek of herring. Caris Yard is empty, and the old pump now bears a warning sign about its potability, although I bury my face in its musty gush and drink and drink from it, and then look around. But there’s nothing, nobody. Just the same old buildings, dense as ever with hope and hopelessness. I walk on. Through Ashington, and the tall flesh-coloured buildings which the new great grandmaster’s dreams once created, which are graffified now, and reek of refuse and piss. Doxy Street is brighter, busier, but then it always was. Along Cheapside, past Clerkenwell, the grinding tramtracks dissolve. A new tram flashes by, an incandescent dream trailing sparks from the antennae on its roof. The gaslights have gone here as well. The air has a sharper, different feel, and I stop and my breath halts in my throat when I see a shadow stretch before me, sharp and sweet as the ache of a pulled knife. But it’s only my own image cast down across these pavements by these new lampposts with their flaring lights.
Electricity, Robert! It’s the way of the future!
And he was right. It is. But all I see are ghosts.

Then the final turn which leads me to the place to which it seems I’ve always been heading. To the house at the end of the cul-de-sac with its dark clouds of privet still in the same need of trimming as they were all those years ago. There are a couple of carriages and a car parked outside, but the place seems scarcely lit. My shadow sweeps over the door and I bang long and hard until I get a reply.

‘We’re closed. It’s …’ A young face peers through the crack in the chained door. But she takes in who and what I am, and cranks back the bolts. Yawning in a sliding dressing gown, she leads me up far more stairs than there ever used to be to the final room on the top floor.

‘Master Robert …’ By slow increments, Marm gets herself up from the divan by the window and stoops towards me. From her, the loss of the
grand
part of my title is a blessed relief. It takes me back, and I love the sour buttery scent of her old woman’s flesh as she leans against me, and the bitter tang of smoke which lies beyond. She’s taken to wearing a curly wig now, over what remains of her hair, and her hands, as I ease myself from her and settle into my accustomed chair, are even more bulged and arthritic than those of the son who never visits her. Yet still she manages to maintain a semblance of a guildswoman’s grace as she shambles across the rucked carpet and flicks open the catches of her marquetry cabinet with her brown nails and extracts the seeds and boxes. She and I, we’re like two elderly actors reprising the characters which we once did so much better in another Age. But they’re the only roles we have left to play.

‘It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you. Why downstairs, they’ve almost forgotten your name ..

I settle back into the straps and cushions as the small pot bubbles and the blue flame glows, soothed as I always am by her croaky patter, which never changes, and is designed to make me imagine I come here far less often than I do, or should. Then the glow of aether and the hatpin’s swirl. I could do all this myself; but I never would. I love being here too much, and her presence, and the flood of anticipatory saliva and the thickening of my tongue which comes with that first glowing waft of smoke. Her guild, at least, hasn’t changed. It never will. Ages might crumble, heroes die, the greatest love might fade, and we could remain forever in this room. But then, even as she wrinkles her mouth around the long pipe, there’s the final and most important exchange. I reach into my pockets. I give her the money, Niana. All of it. Marm lifts it to her face and inhales the crumpled flower of notes before she stuffs it into her special jar. And she smiles.

‘You’re most generous tonight, Master Robert. We’ll have to see what we can do. Where we can take you to that’s special ..

‘But you already know.’

‘Yes.’ She studies me, her face quivering, her eyes dulled and alight. ‘I suppose I do.’

Then, finally, finally, she puts the pipe back to her lips and inhales the glowing spell, and then leans forward, one arm trembling to support the weight of the other until she can place her dry lips against mine. She kisses me. And I kiss her. I breathe in. And I’m flying. Floating.

The Ages drop away until the time and the place which will always be more real to me than any other swarms back into view. I’m sitting on a small train heading on a single track line out of Bracebridge on a day at the last edge of summer, and my mother smiles back at me as the great hills slide by beyond the rippled glass and we rock to and fro. Rainharrow, then Scarside, Fareden and Hallowfell. I know we only have tickets for some obscure local station, but in my mind we’re leaving Bracebridge forever, heading together into incredible adventures which will take us to the deeper truth on which I have always felt my life to be teetering.

I still don’t know what that truth is, but I’m sure that, when I find it, it will be marvellous.

Ian R. MacLeod is the acclaimed writer of challenging and innovative speculative and fantastic fiction. His most recent novel,
Wake Up and Dream
, won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, while his previous works have won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the World Fantasy Award, and have been translated into many languages. His short story, “Snodgrass,” was developed for television in the United Kingdom as part of the Sky Arts series
Playhouse Presents
. MacLeod grew up in the West Midlands region of England, studied law, and spent time working and dreaming in the civil service before moving on to teaching and house-husbandry. He lives with his wife in the riverside town of Bewdley.

Gillian Bowskill

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2003 by Ian R. MacLeod

Cover design by Michel Vrana

978-1-4804-2366-4

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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