The Magic Cottage

PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN

I DROVE AWAY from Bunbury feeling angry, mixed-up, and I don't know what else. Mystified, I suppose. Oh yeah, and somehow used.

The late Flora Chaldean's solicitor had agreed to see me with considerable reluctance, and really he didn't have much choice. He had some responsibility regarding the sale of Gramarye and I was insistent on a meeting between us. Could be he felt some pangs of guilt, too.

I wanted to see him because there were certain matters concerning the old lady and the cottage that needed explaining, and Ogborn was probably the most important link (if not the only link). I wanted information. I wanted to learn more about Flora Chaldean. I wanted to know more about Gramarye. I wanted to find out what the Synergist connection was.

Well, I'd been given answers, but I can't say they were explanations. Now I was confused in a different way.

Bickleshift, the estate agent who'd sold us the property, was the first one I'd tried to contact after my sickening (literally) experience with the bats in the loft, but he'd been away on a two-week vacation. You might think, incidentally, that I'd overreacted to that particular incident—after all, they were only small winged mammals with pointed ears having babies—but you had to be there to understand there was more going on, that there was nothing Bambi about those tiny, pulpy offspring, nothing cute about them, that this new-life emergence was more akin to an excretion than a spawning. You see, it was like witnessing the propagation of disharmony, the assertion of malign influences, rather than just a natural delight of nature, because it had become very plain to me by then that there were two sides to Gramarye, two climes, or latitudes, whichever way you'd choose to describe these opposing atmospheres. Different zones, maybe. Positive and Negative. We'd experienced the good, the Positive, when we'd first moved in. Now something was elbowing that aside. In the words of Dylan (Bob), times they were "a changin'." And thinking back, the changes had started at the first appearance of the Synergists.

And these newborn bats somehow represented the unwholesome metamorphosis Gramarye was going through, a change that couldn't be sudden, that was a creeping thing, slow like a monster crawling from the ocean to slime its way up the shore, learning to breathe, gathering strength to rise. Urged on by those who could have use of its power.

Absurd? That's only the half of it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, and I only mention these things because that's how insights were coming at me, like random droplets of awareness falling from some high place, spattering my head in tiny shocks before soaking through to my brain. Driving back to the cottage that day, I remembered exactly what I'd told Midge a couple of nights before, how I'd suggested she was some kind of catalyst or intermediary. I wondered if the Synergists, and more specifically Mycroft, were a different form of catalyst.

Anyhow, Bickleshift was away, so I'd rung the solicitor, who'd ummed and aahed and finally agreed to an appointment for late afternoon the following day.

I hadn't said anything to Midge when she'd returned from the village, hadn't even mentioned how my guitars « had warped, their strings, steel ones and all, shrinking inexplicably. I wanted some facts before presenting my case. She seemed too preoccupied with her own thoughts anyway and today she thought I'd gone into Bunbury to buy sheet music.

I'd spent an uneasy night and Midge had been restless too, but in her sleep. She'd murmured and tossed, her hands clutching at the bedcovers as though she were afraid of plunging into some dream abyss.

My half-hearted attempts to break through her continued reserve next morning came to nothing, as much my fault as hers: we were like two punch-drunk protagonists, a little too dazed to see one another clearly, let alone throw a punch. Only when I was driving away from the cottage later that afternoon did my thoughts (and my energy) shape up again. Yeah, it was a relief to be away from the place.

Cantrip appeared almost deserted on the way back and I checked my watch. Nearly six—I hadn't realized it was so late. The shops were closed and the villagers were probably settling down for evening meals. The sun had decided to head for the hills.

Through the village, moving into the forest lanes. Soon to be home. And the question begged: What kind of home was it? Mycroft might know better than anyone.

I kept a steady speed, keen to be with Midge again, hoping this time she'd listen to what I had to say, to what Ogborn had told me. No, I'd make her listen. Whatever attitude she had, she would be forced to listen. Then we'd explore Mycroft's sinister motives together.

I was strangely nervous of the forest's louring deepness on either side of the road.

Gramarye came into view, walls still beacon-white in the slowly cooling rays of the sun. The garden was beautifully colored. Only when I drew close did the flowers begin to appear faded, did the building's brickwork reveal its sneaking blemishes. I parked the car in its grassy space and vaulted over the fence.

I could hear the phone ringing inside the cottage.

The door was closed, and I was surprised at that; Midge loved the fresh air to waft through the rooms, up the stairways, and she adored the framed view of the garden from the kitchen. The phone was still ringing.

Quickly unlocking the door, I pushed against it, meeting with some resistance at first. Firmer pressure sent the door inward and I stopped momentarily on the threshold, eyes adjusting to the gloom inside. That gloom seemed unreasonably slow to give way to the brightness surging past my shoulders.

I called out Midge's name, even though I was fairly sure she wasn't there: front door shut, phone left unanswered, and something else—the almost tangible coldness of her absence. Only the persistent ringing occupied the dank air.

I went to the stairs, thinking it could be Midge at the other end of the phone, that maybe she was calling to let me know where she was. But where could she have gone without the car?

I climbed in a rush, certain the ringing would stop before I got there, grabbing the receiver midshrill.

Static hawked in my ear and I jerked my head away.

"Hello . . . hello . . . ?"

I could just hear the faint voice behind the interference: the call sounded as though it came from a remote battlefield with artillery fire all around. I thumped the earpiece hard into the palm of my hand, unclogging carbon granules with the impact, and for a while the distant gunfire quietened.

"Can you hear me?" asked the familiar voice.

"Yeah. Is that you, Val?"

The agent's voice remained a long way off.

"Mike? Mike, is Midge there with you?"

"Uh, no. I just got in myself, and she doesn't appear to be around."

"Perhaps it's as well—it's you I wanted to talk to."

The chill huff of apprehension tensed my neck.

"What's the problem?" I asked, my casualness forced.

"I'm not sure. It's all rather peculiar, actually."

The ceasefire was suddenly over and she was almost lost in the barrage.

"Can you hear me, Mike?"

I could, but only faintly.

"This line is bloody awful."

"Hang on, Val," I shouted into the mouthpiece. I banged the receiver again, this time with more force. The crackle remained, but was at least less obtrusive.

"Okay," I said, "what did you have to tell me?"

"You might find this very odd."

Oh really? I smiled thinly.

"It's to do with Midge's painting," she explained. "The painting of Gramarye."

"Go on," I told her warily.

"When I first saw the picture, before . . . before it was ruined . . . something struck me. I felt somehow I'd seen that picture . . ." static overrode her words for a second or two ". . . remember where. I convinced myself that my brain was playing games after the tiring journey down. I'd seen the same view in the flesh, as it were, when I'd arrived at the cottage that evening. I assumed that what I thought had been déjà vu, was in fact the association of reality with the painting's fantasy."

"Val, this line's gonna break up completely . . ."

"All right, I'm coming to the point. Mike, find a copy of a book Midge illustrated several years ago . . ."

I lost her again as the crackling crescendoed. The agitation settled after another hefty thump from me. The palm of my hand was becoming red with the bashing it was taking.

"Sorry, I missed that. What book are you talking about?"

"It's called Sorcerer's Kingdom, you know the one?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"Well, look at page twenty-seven."

"What?"

"Look hard and you'll see what I mean . . ."

I yanked the phone away as static all but exploded in my ear. It sounded like a direct hit at the other end.

"Mike . . . can you hear me?"

"Only just."

"Can you hear . . ."

"Look, Val," I shouted, "I'll call you back later!"

". . . at the illustration . . ."

"Okay, okay!" I don't know if she caught my hurried good-bye, but clunking the receiver down was a relief.

I didn't stay a moment longer in the hallway musing over what Val had asked me to do. I went straight into the round room and headed for the bookcase there. I searched the titles and couldn't find the one I was looking for. But then we had many books and Midge made no special display of those illustrated by her. The spare room, where we kept the major part of our collection, was the next place I tried. I scanned the loaded shelves and soon came across Sorcerer's Kingdom.

It was a modest-sized edition, a tale of fairies and witches and sorcerers and dragons, aimed at five-to-eight-year-olds but, as we understood from the publisher, bought by many adults for the cult pleasure of its illustrations. This particular children's story did a lot for coffee tables.

I tugged at the top binding with one finger, then pulled the book free. Although it wasn't dark in the room, I carried my find over to the window.

Outside, the forest looked very still and very dense.

I flicked through the pages, looking for twenty-seven, the rich colors of the illustrations no more than kaleidoscopic patterns as they skimmed by.

Twenty-seven.

My hand pressed the leaf flat.

The focal point of the picture was a white, multiturreted castle. I vaguely remembered how the storyline ran: this was an enchanted castle inhabited by a magician, the top gun in all the land, but who was aged and failing, and seeking a worthy successor before the darker forces which prowled the woodlands and underworld subjugated his territories.

I frowned, unable to make the connection with Midge's recent painting. Not until I looked closer, that is.

There was a pixie village in the foreground of the illustration, red-capped toadstools for houses, packed bright-colored stones for a road. The pixies themselves were a jolly enough bunch. Further on, the forest began, lush and gouache green. But like the real forest outside the window, very still and very dense.

Beyond were lighter shades of the hills, the road reemerging from the woodland, and rising up from one hill was the enchanted castle itself, the ancient sorcerer diminutive but clearly seen on the highest turret.

In the forest was a small glade, and in that glade stood a tiny yet finely detailed cottage. Part of it was rounded.

There was no mistake. That cottage was Gramarye.