The Silver Bough (33 page)

A
S SHE STOOD
staring at the mass of rock and mud and rubble that blocked the road, Kathleen heard a car approaching. She didn’t turn to look, but when it stopped and the engine switched off, she felt intruded upon, and edged aside, heading back for her car, hoping she could get away without the need for conversation. She was feeling decidedly fragile after her experience in Ina McClusky’s house.

“Kathleen?”

Her heart gave a great leap, and she stopped and turned to face him. Dave Varney looked more tentative than she’d imagined he could, and on an impulse she said, “Were you trying to run away, too?”

He flinched. “Too? Does that mean you got my note?”

“What note?”

“So you weren’t running away from
me
.”

“I hadn’t noticed you chasing,” she said, rather tartly.

“It’s not for lack of desire, believe me. Or the will. But
things
have been conspiring against me.”

“Things?”

“Mechanical things. My phone. This…
vee
-hicle. If I told you everything, it’d be like ‘the dog ate my homework, miss, and then the bus hit a dinosaur…’”

She laughed. He smiled, looking less strained, and as their eyes met she felt a current running between them, and knew he felt it too. “So…you wrote me a note?”

“Mmm. In my old-fashioned way. Handwritten, hand-delivered—I got to the library about fifteen minutes too late, so I pushed it through the mail slot in the library house door, and hoped you were in, or would be very soon…and I walked around for a bit, then I thought I’d drive around for a bit; and then I saw you.”

“And thought I’d been so freaked out by your note that I was trying to escape?”

He screwed up his face, looking embarrassed. “Well, it wasn’t the response I’d hoped for.”

“Are you going to tell me what it said?”

“Not right this minute. Do you want to go somewhere? For a drink or something?”

“Sure.”

He made a gesture toward his car, but she stepped back, looking at her own. “I’d rather not leave mine here. Why don’t we meet somewhere?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Um, if you don’t mind…I mean, if you’re driving anyway, could I come with you?”

She looked from his gleaming Porsche to her cheap-and-cheerful Micra, and she shrugged. “I don’t mind. I guess I could bring you back here to pick up your car later…”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” he said quickly. “You don’t have to do that. It’s just that I’m afraid…I have this feeling…that something else might happen if we don’t stick together. I don’t want to lose you.”

Her heart gave a leap at his words, and she turned away, shaken. Was he for real? “OK, let’s go. Harbour Bar at the Victoria all right?”

Neither of them spoke during the short drive back. She wondered if he felt he’d said too much already, or if she was ridiculously oversensitive, ascribing a deeply personal meaning to lightly meant remarks. At this time of day the street in front of the library was deserted, as usual, so she parked there, close to home. “The Vic’s just around the corner,” she explained.

“Your local?”

“I guess.” She didn’t care for visiting bars on her own, and had been inside the Harbour Bar only once. “The food isn’t the greatest.”

“Thanks for the warning. We’ll stick to liquid sustenance. The drinks are all right?”

“They don’t do cocktails.”

He looked comically shocked. “Neither do I!”

As they approached the front of the hotel they saw that two small tables for two had been set out on the sidewalk.

“How very Mediterranean,” he said. “Shall we?”

“Absolutely.”

He pulled out a chair for her.

“We have to make the most of this weather,” she said. “It can’t go on like this forever. It’s
October
.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“What do you mean?”

“It may be October in the rest of the world, but is it here? Are we still following the same calendar? Are we in the same time zone? Do the same rules still apply?”

She looked at him uncertainly, but before she could say anything, a bright-eyed, fresh-faced young woman wearing a crisp white blouse and short black skirt approached their table asking what they’d like to drink.

“A glass of red wine for me.”

“My tipple as well. Shall we get a bottle?”

“If you like.”

“No, if
you
like. I won’t bother unless you’ll have an equal share.”

“I think I could manage a couple of glasses.”

“OK, then. Any preferences?”

“I’ll leave it to you—the one you ordered with dinner on Saturday was very nice.”

As he fell into a discussion with their server about the wines on offer, Kathleen looked at her watch and saw that it had stopped. She looked at Dave’s arms, bare where he’d pushed up his sleeves, showing coppery hairs and freckled, lightly tanned skin, but no watch. His hands had neatly trimmed nails and pinkish, rather prominent knuckles. He wore a plain, flat platinum band on the fourth finger of his left hand. She glanced at it and glanced away again, remembering the wife who had died so young of cancer. Kay was her name, Kay Riddle. He had spoken of her quite naturally, without awkwardness, during that first evening they’d spent together, not dwelling on it, but letting her know about his loss, and thereafter able to say “we” or refer to Kay without further explanation. That he’d loved his wife very much—that he loved her still—she didn’t doubt. The sight of his wedding ring gave her a small pang, but it was only a small one. After all, they weren’t kids, they both had their private histories, and there was no sense in being jealous of a dead woman.

“I did try to call you,” he said quietly, and she flashed him a startled look, feeling uncomfortably as if he’d just homed in on her innermost feelings. “I couldn’t get through. Is your phone working all right?”

She thought of the trouble she’d had in the library. “I’m not sure.”

“I can’t use mine at all. No network coverage for the cell phone, and I had to unplug the landline because otherwise it would keep ringing, and—”

“And?” she prompted after a few seconds.

“And nobody there.”

She didn’t think that was what he had been going to say, but their server was approaching with a bottle and two glasses on a tray, and by the time he’d tasted the wine and approved it, and two full glasses had been poured, the moment when she might have quizzed him had passed.

They toasted each other silently and drank. The wine was soft and delicious and she relaxed and sighed with pleasure. “It’s like being on vacation.”

“Could be a permanent state.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well.” He looked into his glass and took a gulp before he went on. “Have you heard of HyBrasil?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A traveling island that appears and disappears. It could never be reliably charted because it kept moving, and was often surrounded by mists. It’s seen mostly by sailors, a few of whom managed to land on its shores; it’s also been seen on occasion by people from the coasts of Ireland and Scotland. The same sort of story used to be told about
this
place, the island of apple trees,
Innis Ubhall
, Avalon, the island of the blessed, where no one ever died or had to wear themselves out laboring, because there was magic in the very soil, or at least in the apples that the inhabitants dined upon, until, whether because of a navigational error, or interference from some sly culture hero, Avalon ran smack into the coast of Britain during a mighty storm and was ever afterward stuck fast. Stop me; you look like you’ve heard this one before.”

“Sort of. There’s a man who comes into the library most days, doing research for a local history he’s writing—Graeme Walker.”

“Graeme-the-Post. An absolute mine of local information. I was amazed to find out he’s a transplant from Glasgow. I’d thought his roots must be centuries deep. So, he told you the legend?”

“Not as a legend. He says he’s got geological evidence that this area used to be an island. He says there’s no historical evidence for its being here before the sixteen hundreds. It’s certainly not shown on the oldest maps of Scotland.”

He leaned across with the bottle and poured her some more wine. She was surprised to realize she’d already finished her first glass and resolved to slow down.

“Does Graeme have a theory about the original inhabitants?”

“The people who were here before the incomers came?”

“That’s it.”

She shrugged.

“They were supposed to be immortal,” he said. “Once the island was grounded, though, they lost that magical protection and became more like ordinary folks. They began to age, and suffer from ordinary infirmities. They intermarried with the incomers. According to the stories, some of them became Christians and were happy to exchange their pagan immortality for life everlasting. As for the others—well, they didn’t die, but they kept getting older, and after a hundred or a hundred and fifty years they began to shrink and shrivel, getting smaller and smaller until they were no bigger than newborn babies. Their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren had to look after them as they aged, but since they ate less and slept more, like the babies they began to resemble, they weren’t much trouble to keep. Even so, as the years went by their descendants tended to forget about them, and instead of recognizing them as their ancestors, they thought these tiny little people living in cupboards and odd corners of the house and garden were some sort of supernatural beings, elves and fairies, to be treated with great caution—Kathy, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The memory of her experience in Ina McClusky’s house came back in a rush, sending a panic flood of fear all through her.

He put a hand on hers, warm and solid and comforting. “Hey. Kathleen?”

“Something weird happened to me today.” She grimaced. “What you said reminded me of it, but—it’s crazy.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t think I’ve had quite enough to drink yet.” She laughed a little.

“Drink up, then. Listen, I’ve never been a particularly credulous or superstitious kind of guy, but today, some of the things that’ve been happening…” He shook his head.

“Like what?”

“You’ll think I’m crazy.” He smiled at her, teasing, and she smiled back, her fear eased by the pleasure of his company.

“Try me. You tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine—unless this is just a trick.”

His eyebrows shot up. “How can you be so distrustful when you hardly know me?”

“I had a big brother.”

“Oh, man, please tell me that’s not how you think of me! As your
brother
?”

“I was using that as an example of—I promise you I don’t.”

“Good. Because I really don’t need another little sister.”

“Are you going to tell me about the weird things that happened to you today, or have we moved on to the subject of sibling rivalry?”

“OK.” He took a fortifying gulp of wine. “Well, apart from the general cut-off-ness that’s descended on the Apple—no grocery deliveries, no mail, no phone service,
et cetera
and the fog—”

“What fog?”

He gestured out at the lights of the harbor, and she was surprised to see night had fallen already. “You can’t see it from here, but if you go up in the hills, to any height at all, there it is, out at sea, a line of fog, like heavy, low cloud, on all sides. We’re surrounded by it, much as we are by the sea.”

She frowned, feeling the same uncanny prickling at the back of her neck as she’d felt on entering the library that morning. The feeling—she’d nearly forgotten after everything else—similar to what she’d experienced in Nell’s orchard, as of some other, non-human presence nearby. She pushed the thought away, determined to be reasonable. “That’s probably just a weather system, isn’t it? You often get fogs at sea, and if the air is warmer than the land…”

“There could be a natural explanation. I’m just telling you, I’ve never seen anything like it—the way it’s stayed out there, in the same place, all day. It struck me as weird. Another thing—I don’t know how well you know Appleton yet, and I could be wrong about this, but I’ve seen things—buildings, mostly—looking like they’ve been in place forever, that I would swear I’ve never seen before.”