Dark Mist Rising (20 page)

‘Yes,' I said to Tom, ‘I have been here before.'

First I had to make my way down to the beach. I remembered from three years ago that in the Country of the Dead, whose landscape resembles but does not duplicate the land of the living, there had been no track from the cliff down to the beach. This was where I had first seen the sailor Bat fly up through the air, and so had realized that the Dead – if not lapsed into quiet trance – had power I had not realized. But I was not dead and could not fly though the air, neither here nor there. So before I crossed over, I picked my way carefully down the steep, overgrown but fortunately moonlit path to the beach.

The dog followed me. He sniffed with interest at bushes, at holes in the ground, at spoor. When finally I reached the beach, he lost interest, lay down on the pebbles and went to sleep.

A little breeze had risen with the sunset, ruffling the water into wavelets against the shore. I stood for a long time, watching the water break gently against the rocks, gathering my courage. Then I lay down close to the cliff edge, bashed my thigh with a stone and crossed over.

Darkness—

Cold—

Dirt choking my mouth—

Worms in my eyes—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

Night was replaced by the steady low light of the Country of the Dead. The fog was wispy here, hanging in sparse pale patches that I could easily see through. For a long moment I stood motionless, waiting to see if I would be sent back, as I had been on Soulvine Moor. But nothing yanked me away, and so I made my way through the fog towards the Dead.

They sat on the beach or on the rocks, some far out to sea. No waves threatened their perch. There was one circle of Dead, but it contained only four sailors; they did not hold hands, and no thick mist shrouded their heads. Whatever Soulvine Moor was doing to the Country of the Dead, it had not yet reached this eastern shore.

Not all of the Dead on the little beach were sailors or wreckers. Over time, other people had died here. I saw two small children dressed in old-fashioned smocks, a fisherman and a barefoot man dressed in crude furs. There was only one woman on the beach. I went over and crouched beside her.

‘Aunt Jo?'

She didn't answer, of course. It was odd to see such a tranquil expression on her face, which I had known only pinched with worry or distorted with fear. A little way off sat Hartah, the source of all those years of worry and fear. I did not look at him directly, my aunt's brutish husband, who had terrorized both her and me. There was nothing I wished from him now. All accounts between us had been settled the night of the wreck, when I drove his own knife between his ribs.

‘Aunt Jo, it's Roger. Roger Kilbourne.'

She gazed serenely at nothing, from eyes the light brown of my own. My mother's eyes were darker, the colour of rich spring earth. Aunt Jo was – had been – her older sister, but I didn't know by how many years. Nor did I know how old my mother had been when she died and I was sent to live with Aunt Jo. I was seventeen now. If my mother had been, say, twenty when I was born and her sister ten years older, that would make my aunt forty-four when she died. Not yet an old woman, and it is old women who are most willing to talk to me.

‘Wake up, Aunt Jo!' I shook her shoulder. She did not stir.

‘You must wake up! I don't know where Mother Chilton is, and you are the only other person one who can tell me about ... I need to ... Wake up!'

She did not rouse. I grabbed her thin, frail body and shook her hard. My voice rose to a shout: ‘Aunt Jo!' She did not wake.

Was she really too young to be roused, or did her dreaming mind prefer the tranquillity of the death trance to the horror that had been her life? The gash that had torn open her head when Hartah hit her with the brass-bound wooden box – that gash was gone. The Dead do not carry their fatal injuries beyond the grave. But I could nonetheless see her terrible life with Hartah in the starved thinness of her body and the gauntness of her sunken cheeks. She looked older than forty-four, old enough to be wakened as I had wakened other old women in the Country of the Dead, and perhaps she was older and merely choosing to stay tranced.

The idea enraged me. I shook her again. ‘Wake up! Wake up! There are things I need to know and only you can tell me. Who calls my name in the Country of the Dead? Why is there fresh blood on my mother's gown? Who was my father? Damn you, Aunt Jo, wake up or I'll

... I'll ...'

I could not say it. But I was prepared to do it:
Wake up
or I'll carry you back with me to the land of the living and make
you talk
.

I could do it. I had done it before. And if I did, Aunt Jo would have a fortnight of renewed life and then she would vanish for ever, would rot away in less than a minute, and would exist no longer in either realm. Whatever the Dead waited for – if they waited – she would not receive it; death could not be cheated for long. I would have my answers, but at the price of my aunt's eternity.

‘Curse you! Answer me, or I
will
do it! Wake up! Wake up! Who calls my name in the Country of the Dead? Who was my father? Who? Who?'

She flopped like a doll in my one good hand. No emotion, no recognition, no life crossed her face. I pulled her close and prepared to cross back over.

At the last moment, I could not do it.

This woman had not protected me from Hartah, but she had taken me in when my mother died and own father did not come for me. Aunt Jo had shared with me what little food Hartah gave us. She had urged me, on that terrible day of the shipwreck, to flee Hartah while I still could (‘Go, Roger! Go!'). For eight years, whatever kindness I had experienced had come from her, and if it had not been much, she had nonetheless strained to give it to me. I could not repay her by robbing her of this existence, the nature of which I did not even understand in the first place. For all I knew, the Dead were ecstatically happy inside their oblivious bodies. For all I knew.

I laid Aunt Jo back onto the pebbles of the little beach. To Hartah I gave a vicious, utterly pointless kick, sending him sprawling onto his calm face. Then I bit my tongue and crossed back over.

It was a good thing I did. Although I had spent only a few moments in the Country of the Dead, hours had passed in the land of the living. The tide was coming in and water half-covered my senseless body; in another few minutes I would have drowned. It was dawn and mist swirled across the little beach.

I stood, soggy and chilled. A figure came towards me in the fog.

For a dazed, horrified moment I thought I was still in the Country of the Dead, and the figure, crowned, would give that terrible laugh that shivered along my bones. But I was in the land of the living, the fog was only morning mist rapidly burning off as the sun rose, and the woman was not crowned. She wore a grey dress and grey cap. She looked neither young nor old, fat nor thin, pretty nor ugly. She
did
look angry.

It was Mother Chilton.

All I could do was stare at her and stammer. ‘How ... how ...'

‘How did I know that you thought to bring back your poor aunt but did not do so? Don't be so stupid, Roger. I know that you did not because your aunt is not here, is she? And I know you thought to do so because why else would you come to this place? It's not as if you have fond memories of this beach or the clearing above.'

‘But how did ... did you know I was here?'

She gazed at me, and under that calm disapproving stare I felt fifteen again, a lovesick blunderer coming to her shop for a milady-posset without knowing what it was or why Cecilia needed it. I lay again in an empty apple cellar while Mother Chilton cured me of black pus by cutting off my hand. I stood, drugged by her potions, in a secret chamber of the palace and watched Queen Caroline burn at the stake. With me again was every terrible mistake I had ever made since I last stood on this damp beach. And here
we
were again, Roger the fool and Mother Chilton the rescuer. Nothing had changed.

‘All has changed,' she said severely, without answering my question. ‘Roger Kilbourne, you must stop crossing over. But first you must come up from the tide.'

The water had nearly reached the tops of my boots in the few moments we had stood talking. The small beach acted as a funnel, drawing in the tide. Mother Chilton and I climbed back up the rough track, she first. Behind us the sun rose, burning off the mist below, and the sea lay calm and blue and hard.

At the top of the track, in the shade of a stand of pine twisted by salt wind, she turned to me. Disapproval turned into urgency. ‘Roger, you must give me your promise that you will not cross over again, not ever. It is more important than you can know. Promise me!'

For the first time ever, I felt the balance between us shift. I had something she wanted. Meanly – and I knew it was mean even as I said it, for I owed her my life – I said, ‘I will promise only if you first give me answers.'

Her expression did not change, but her old-young eyes glittered with anger. She did not answer me, and I took the absence of denial as cause enough to press ahead.

‘What was Fia?'

‘I think you already know what Fia was.' Mother Chilton folded her arms across her chest. She would give me nothing I did not work for.

‘Fia was ... was ...' Difficult words to say, to even think. I postponed them for a moment by saying, ‘There are many of you ... you women who know the soul arts. Aren't there?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is the ability passed from mother to daughter?'

‘Sometimes. Not always. Neither Caroline nor her mother had talent, but her grandmother did.' Arms still folded, she waited for me to reach my question.

‘And Fia was one of you?'

‘No. She was not.'

‘Then who was she?'

Mother Chilton said nothing.

‘But she was ... was brought back from the Country of the Dead, wasn't she?'

‘Yes.'

‘And now she exists nowhere, and never will?'

‘That is true.' Sudden pain crossed Mother Chilton's face, and I saw that she too mourned Fia.

‘But
why
?' I cried. ‘Why do that to her? Why?'

‘It was not done
to
her, Roger. She chose it.'

‘The Dead cannot choose anything! They are quiescent! You cannot tell me—'

‘I can tell you truth, ‘ she said, her composure vanishing, ‘but you will not listen to it. Fia chose to do this while she still dwelt in the land of the living. She chose to die and be brought back over, and die again, as a fighter against those forces you cannot understand. She had a task to do, and she did it.'

My knees gave way, and I grasped a pine tree for support. ‘Fia ... Fia did that to persuade me to stop crossing over?'

‘No. Don't be so arrogant. Before she died, Fia did not even know that you existed.'

‘Then what ... She came originally from Soulvine Moor?' Those green eyes, so much like Cecilia's.

‘Yes.' Mother Chilton's expression shifted. She unfolded her arms, as if coming to some decision. My breath stopped in my chest. She had decided to tell me the truth.

‘Fia was a Soulviner, from Galtryf, the heart of the enemy. I use that word advisedly, Roger Kilbourne. Soulvine Moor is the enemy of all that lives. Fia saw what was happening there, and it sickened her. She escaped. She thought to find any of the women who practise the soul arts and tell us of Soulvine's plans. She actually reached the border of the Unclaimed Lands. To have got that far, already dying—'

‘Dying?'

‘Galtryf had poisoned her. It keeps all of its young on a steady low dose of poison until it is sure it has snared their minds. Without the antidote in the food that Fia ate every day, the sickness took her. But she kept going, dragging herself over the border, where no Soulviner would go. You know why.'

I knew. Anyone who left Soulvine Moor and attempted to return would meet with the same death I had only barely escaped.

‘A boy found her in the Unclaimed Lands. An ignorant boy, not very intelligent. But before she died, Fia made him promise to find a
hisaf
to cross her back over. The boy did so. The people of the Unclaimed Lands, most of them anyway, still respect the old truths.'

Like Jee. I could picture Fia, dying in pain, gasping out her last request to a rough young lout – who would honour it. Also like Jee.

‘You can guess the rest,' Mother Chilton said. ‘A
hisaf
brought Fia back over, and she found women of the soul arts to tell what she had learned. Then, during the rest of the fortnight left to her, wanting to be as useful as possible, she was taken to you to obtain your promise to never cross over again. A promise you broke the very next day.'

‘She tricked me! She—'

‘I know what she did,' Mother Chilton said severely. ‘Do you still not understand, Roger? This is a
war
. It is much, much larger than your petty concerns. And you must stay out of it.'