Weave World

Part Thirteen. Magic Night

‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.' Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

I

BLIZZARD

1

Ice had stopped the clocks of England.

Though the meteorologists had been predicting Siberian conditions for more than a week, the sudden drop in temperature found the country, as usual, unprepared. Trains had ceased to run; aircraft were grounded. Telephone and power lines were down in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire; villages and even small towns in the Southern Counties cut off by drifting snow. The plea from the media was to stay at home; advice that was widely taken, leaving industry and commerce to dwindle and - in some areas - stop entirely. Nobody was moving, and with good reason. Large sections of motorway were closed, either blocked by snow or stranded vehicles; the major roads were a nightmare, the minor roads impassable. To all intents and purposes the Spectred Isle had ground to a halt.

2

It had taken Cal some time to locate Rayment's Hill amongst Gluck's comprehensive supply of maps, but he found it eventually: it was in Somerset, South of Glastonbury. In ordinary conditions it was perhaps an hour's drive down the M5. Today, however, God alone knew how long it would take.

Gluck, of course, wanted to come with him, but Cal suspected that if the Seerkind were indeed in hiding at the hill they'd not take kindly to his bringing a stranger into their midst. He put the point to Gluck as gently as he could. Try as he might Gluck couldn't conceal his disappointment, but said he understood how delicate these encounters could be; he'd been preparing himself for just such a meeting all his life; he would not insist. And yes, of course Cal could take one of the cars, though neither was exactly reliable.

As Cal prepared to leave, bundled up as best they could devise against the cold, Gluck presented him with a parcel, roughly tied up with string.

‘What is it?' he asked.

‘The jacket,' Gluck replied. ‘And some of the other evidence I picked up.'

‘I don't want to take it. Especially not the jacket.'

"It's their magic, isn't it?' Gluck said. Take it, damn you. Don't make a thief of me.'

‘Under protest.'

‘I put some cigars in too. A little peace offering from a friend.' He grinned. ‘I envy you, Cal; every frozen mile.'

He had time to doubt as he drove; time to call himself a fool for hoping again, for even daring to believe some memory he'd dredged up would lead him to the lost ones. But his dream, or a part of it at least, was validated as he drove. England was a blank page; the blizzard had blotted everything out. Somewhere beneath its shroud people were presumably about their lives, but there was little sign of that. Doors were locked and curtains closed against a day that had begun back towards night somewhere around noon. Those few hardy souls who were out in the storm hurried along the pavements as fast as the ice underfoot would allow, eager to be back beside their fires, where the television would be promising a Christmas of plastic snow and sentiment.

There was practically no traffic on the roads, which allowed Cal to take liberties with the Law: crossing intersections on red and ignoring one-way systems as he escaped the city. Gluck had helped him plan his route before he left, and the news bulletins kept him alerted to road closures, so he made reasonably good progress at first, joining the M5 South of Birmingham, and managing a steady forty miles an hour until - just North of the Worcester junction - the radio informed him that a fatal accident had dosed the motorway between junctions eight and nine. Cursing, he was obliged to leave the motorway and take the A38 through Great Malvern, Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Going was much slower here. No attempt had been made to dear or grit the road, and several vehicles had simply been abandoned by drivers who'd decided that to press on was tantamount to suicide.

The weather worsened as he approached Bristol, obliging him to cut his speed to a crawl. Blinded by snow, he missed the turn for the A37 and had to retrace his route, the sky now almost pitch black though it was still only the middle of the afternoon. A mile or so short of Shepton Mallet he stopped for petrol and chocolate, to be told by a garage attendant that most of the roads south of the town were blocked. He began to feel plotted against. It was as though the weather was somehow part of the Scourge's masterplan; that it knew he was near and was throwing obstacles in his path to see just how hard he'd fight to reach his place of execution.

But if that were so then at least it meant he was on the right track; that somewhere in the wilderness ahead his loved ones were waiting.

3

The truth in the warning he'd been given at the garage became all too apparent when he turned off the A road at Lydford on Fosse, and onto a minor thoroughfare that would in theory carry him West to Rayment's Hill. He'd known before setting out that this would be the most problematic part of the journey, but there was no alternative. No main road fed this area; there were only narrow tracks and backwaters, most of which, he knew, would have been buried beneath the drifts. He advanced maybe two miles, the road ahead white on white, until the ice-clogged tread of the tyres would no longer grip, and the car came to a halt, its spinning wheels doing no more than kick up sheets of snow. He revved the engine, bullying it and coaxing it by turns, but the vehicle was not going to move without help. Reluctantly, he got out, and immediately sank to mid-shin in the snow. Gluck had lent him a pair of hiking boots and heavy socks, which protected his feet, but the chill soaked through his trousers in an instant. He put up the hood of his anorak - again, Gluck's gift - and trudged round to the back of the car. Having no shovel all he could do was clear the snow by hand. His efforts bore no fruit. After twenty minutes' work he hadn't succeeded in getting the car to move an inch either forward or backward.

He decided to give up on the task before his fingertips froze. Taking refuge in the car, the engine idling so as to keep the heat coming, he sat and considered the options available to him. The last sign of human habitation had been back at the turn into this road, two miles behind him; two miles of digging through the drifts - with the snow still falling - in near as damnit total darkness. Suppose, after that walk, he could get someone foolish or charitable enough to help him; hours would have been lost.

There were two other options. One - that he stay where he was and sit out the night. This he rejected without a second thought. The other, that he finish the journey to Rayment's Hill on foot. To judge by his map, which was not detailed, the road forked a little way on. If he were to take the left-hand track it would in principle take him to the vicinity of the hill. He'd be guided almost entirely by instinct, however, for virtually all distinguishing features of the landscape -ditches, hedgerows, the road itself - had disappeared. But what else could he do? It was better to travel blind than not at all.

With the decision made, his spirits rose, and he turned his attention to the problem of protecting himself against the elements. In the back of the car, upturned between the seats, and presumably overlooked, he found a box of Gluck's precious reports. Hoping he'd be forgiven this trespass he clambered over onto the back seat and proceeded to put several layers of paper and photographs between his skin and his clothing, insulating himself with tales of falling frogs and talking bees. The supply exhausted, he tore up the box itself and double lined his trousers - which would take the brunt of the cold - with cardboard. Finally, he ripped up two chamois leathers he found on the back window ledge and wrapped them around his face, pulling his anorak hood up, and tying its drawstring tight to seal himself in. With more paper lining his gloves, he was as ready for the onslaught as he'd ever be. Picking up the parcel Gluck had given him, he turned off the engine and stepped out to meet the snow.

This is the act of a lunatic, he thought as he slammed the door and began to trudge away from the car: I'm Mad Mooney to the bitter end.

It wasn't as dark outside as he'd anticipated. In the time it had taken to prepare for his march the fury of the blizzard had abated somewhat, and the landscape was suffused with a milky brightness, the canvas of snow more luminous than the laden sky above it. There were even breaks in the cloud; stars glimmered between. He began to think he might have a chance after all.

The first quarter-mile did nothing to dispel his optimism, but with the next quarter his makeshift insulation began to fail. The damp started to creep through the cardboard beneath his trousers, numbing his legs. It crept through his gloves and their lining too, making his fingers ache. Worse still, he couldn't find any sign of the fork in the road marked on the map, and became more certain with every dragging step that he'd missed the turning, his present route leading away from the hill rather than towards it.

He decided to take a risk and strike out across the fields. The land to his left rose steeply. Perhaps at the top he'd get a better grasp of the lay of the land. He glanced back in the direction of the car, but he could no longer see it. No matter; he was committed now. He made towards the white face of the hill and began to climb.

The break in the clouds had grown larger, and there was an expanse of glittering sky above him, pin-pointed with stars. He'd learned the names of the major constellations when he bought his telescope, and he could name them easily; he, the Memory Man. They meant nothing of course, those names, except in the human perspective; they were just tags bestowed by some star-gazer who'd seemed to see a pattern in the scattering overhead: a bow and arrow, a bear, a plough. They meant nothing in the cosmic context. But it was a necessary comfort, to see the stars and call them by name, as if you knew them as friends. Without that courtesy the sight might break a man's heart.

The ache in his legs and hands was contagious; his arms and torso had caught it, so had his prick and balls, his ears and sinuses. Indeed there seemed to be no part of him that didn't give him pain. But there was no going back. Another thirty yards would bring him to the top of the hill, he estimated, and began to count them off. At eighteen he had to stop to gain some breath for the remaining twelve. Walking against both the snow and the incline was claiming more energy than he had to give. As he stood, gasping for air like an asthmatic, he glanced down at the tracks he'd left in the snow. He'd taken his path to be straight, but it wandered back and forth wildly.

Not wanting to think about what that signified, he turned back to his ascent. Every step now was a major challenge. He was obliged to lift his knees to groin height in order to step over the snow rather than try and drag through it. His freezing muscles protested every stride, but he finally got there, presented at the summit with a pure white panorama. It was a as though the house of England had been deserted, and a dust-sheet thrown over its furniture ‘til the owners returned. If they returned. It was possible, standing on the rise looking down on the blankness below, the silence utter, to believe they would never come back to this forsaken place, and that he was alone.

But there was a hill, and it could only be the one he sought, because there was no other. Between it and the place he stood, however, lay an expanse of snow-covered fields. At the sight of the distance he had yet to cover his innards seemed to sink. But he knew that standing still would only make his muscles seize up, and so began to career down the slope, barely in control of his body.

Towards the bottom the snow became deeper and deeper still, until he was waist-high in it, and he was not so much walking as swimming. But as he started across the field towards the hill the crippling ache of cold began to fade, and a welcome deadness replaced it. Half way across his fingers let slip the package Gluck had given him, a fact his increasingly narrowed consciousness was barely aware of. His shrinking thoughts had turned to how comfortable the snow he was ploughing through looked. Maybe he should give up his trek for a while, and lay down on this pristine pillow. His head was heavier by the moment, and the snow would be oh so comfortable. Where was the harm in lying down in it ‘til he felt stronger? But lazy as his thoughts were becoming he wasn't so far gone not to know sleep would kill him. If he stopped now he stopped forever.

He reached the bottom of Rayment's Hill on the verge of collapse, then drove himself, step by step, up the slope. It was longer than the first one, but not so steep. He couldn't think far enough ahead to wonder what he'd find on the other side; it took all his mental effort to instruct his limbs to move. But as he came within a few yards of the brow he raised his head in the dim hope of seeing the stars. The clouds had sealed them from sight, however; a fresh assault was mustering in the sky.

Two more steps and he reached the summit, turning his gaze on the landscape laid out below the hill. There was nothing to see. No sign of anything even resembling a hiding place, however vestigial, for as far as his appalled sight stretched. Only snow-covered fields, and more of the same, rolling away into the distance, deserted and silent. He was alone.

If he'd had the strength to weep he would have wept. Instead he let his exhaustion triumph, and he fell down in the snow. There was no way he could make the return journey to the car, even if he'd been able to find his way. That fatal sleep he'd kept denying himself would just have to claim him.

But as his lids began to dose he caught a movement in the wastes at the base of the hill - something was running about in the snow. He tried to focus; failed; pressed his fingers to his face to stir himself; looked up and tried again. His eyes didn't deceive him. There was something moving on the blank page in front of him; an animal of some kind.

Could it be ... a monkey?

He plunged his arms into the snow and hauled himself up, but as he did so he lost his balance and pitched forward. For several seconds earth and sky became a blur as he tumbled down the slope, coming to a halt encased in ice. It took him a moment to re-orient himself, but when he did he saw the animal - and yes, it was a monkey! - fleeing from him.

He stood up, more snow than man, and stumbled after it. Where in God's name was it running to? There were only open fields ahead of it.

Suddenly, the animal vanished. One moment it was plainly in front of him, and he was gaining on it. The very next it had disappeared from the field, as though it had fled through an open door and slammed it closed. He halted, not believing the evidence of his befuddled sight. Was the animal a mirage of some kind? Or had the cold simply undone his sanity?

He stared at the snow. There were distinctly tracks there -paw tracks, where the monkey had been playing. He followed them, and the testimony of his eyes was confirmed. The tracks stopped dead a few feet from where he stood. Beyond the spot there was simply clean, crisp snow; acres of it.

‘All right,' he said to the empty field. ‘Where are you?'

As he spoke he took another step towards the place where the monkey had pulled its disappearing trick, and asked his question again.

‘Please ...' he said, his voice failing, ‘where are you?'

There was no answer, of course. Mirages were silent.

He stared at the tracks, and felt the last vestiges of hope go out of him.

Then a voice said:

‘Don't stand in the cold.'

He looked up. There was nobody visible to right or left of him. But the instructions came again.

‘Two paces forward. And be quick about it.'

He took one tentative step. As he was about to take the second an arm appeared from the air directly in front of him, and - seizing hold of his anorak - claimed him from the snow.

II

SHELTER FROM THE STORM

1

There was a wood on the other side of the curtain through which Cal had been yanked, its thatch of branches so dense all but a sprinkling of snow had been kept from the ground, so that it was mossy and leaf-strewn underfoot. The place was dark, but he could see a fire burning some way off from him, its light welcome, its promise of warmth even more so. Of the man who'd dragged him out of the snow there was no sign; at least he failed to see anyone until a voice said:

Terrible weather we're having,' and he turned to find the monkey Novello, and its human companion, standing no more than two yards from him, camouflaged by stillness.

‘It was Smith who did it,' said the monkey, leaning towards Cal. ‘Him who pulled you through. Don't let them blame me.' The man threw the animal a sideways glance. ‘He's not speaking to me,' Novello announced, ‘because I strayed outside. Well, it's done now, isn't it? Why don't you come along to the fire? You'd better lie down before you fall down.'

‘Yes,' Cal said,'... please.'

Smith led the way. Cal followed, his stupefied brain still grappling with what he'd just experienced. The Kind might be cornered, but they weren't without a trick or two; the illusion that kept this wood from sight had survived dose scrutiny. And once on the other side there was a second surprise: the season. Though the branches of the trees above him were bare, and it was last summer's moss he was walking on, there was a scent of spring in the air, as if the ice that gripped the Spectred Isle from end to end had no hold here. Sap was rising; buds were swelling; things on every side were turning their cells to the sweet labour of growth. The sudden clemency induced a mild euphoria in him, but his frozen limbs hadn't got the message. As he came within a few yards of the fire he felt his body lose its power to hold itself up. He reached out to one of the trees for support, but it stepped away from him - or so it seemed — and he fell forward.

He didn't hit the ground. There were arms to catch him, and he gave himself over to them. They carried him to the vicinity of the fire, and he was gently laid down. A hand touched his cheek and he looked away from the flames to see Suzanna kneeling at his side, firelight on her face.

He said her name - or at least hoped he did. Then he passed out.

2

It had happened before that he'd closed his eyes seeing her, only to wake and find her gone. But not this time. This time she was waiting for him, on the other side of sleep. Not just waiting, but holding him, and rocking him. The layers of clothes, paper pulp and photographs he'd been wearing had been peeled off him as he slept, and a blanket wrapped around his nakedness.

‘I found my way home,' he said to her, when he could get his tongue to work again.

‘I went to Chariot Street to fetch you,' she said, ‘but the house had gone.'

‘I know ...'

‘And Rue Street too.'

He nodded. ‘De Bono came looking for me ....' He halted, silenced by the memory. Even the fire, and her arms around him, couldn't prevent his shuddering as he stood again in the fog, and glimpsed what it had half concealed.

‘... the Scourge came after us,' he said.

‘And Shadwell,' she added.

‘Yes. How did you know?'

She told him about the Shrine.

‘So what happens now?' he said.

‘We wait. We keep the rapture up, and we wait. We're all here now. You were the only one missing.'

‘I'm found now,' he said softly.

She tightened her hold on him.

‘And there'll be no more separations,' she said. ‘We'll just have to pray they pass us by.'

‘No praying please,' said a voice from behind Suzanna. ‘We don't want angels hearing us.'

Cal craned his neck to see the newcomer. The lines on the face before him were deeper than they'd been, the beard a little more grizzled: but it was still Lem's face, Lem's smile.

‘Poet,' Lo said, bending to put his hand through Cal's hair. ‘We almost lost you.'

‘No chance,' said Cal, with a slow smile. ‘Have you still got the fruits?'

Lo patted the breast pocket of his coat, the modernity of which rather suited him. ‘Got them here,' he said. ‘Speaking of which: is the man hungry?'

‘I can always eat,' said Cal.

There's food to be had when you want it.'

Thank you.'

Lem was about to depart, then turned back and very solemnly said:

‘Will you help me plant, Calhoun? When the time comes?'

‘You know I will.'

Lem nodded. ‘I'll see you in a while,' he said, and withdrew from the circle of firelight.

‘Are my clothes dry?' Cal asked. ‘I can't wander around like this.'

‘Let me see if I can borrow something for you,' Suzanna replied.

He sat up to let her rise, but before she did so she kissed him on the lips. It was not a casual kiss; its touch did more to warm him than a dozen fires. When she left his side he had to wrap the blanket around him to cover up the fact that more than sap was rising tonight.

Alone, he had time to think. Though he'd come within spitting distance of death it was already difficult to remember the pain he'd been in, such a short time ago; possible, even, to think there was no world at all beyond this enchanted wood, and that they could stay here forever and make magic. But seductive as that thought was he knew indulging it, even for a moment, was dangerous. If there was to be a life for the Kind after tonight - if by some miracle Uriel and its keeper did pass them by - then that life had to be lived as part of the Wonderland he'd found in Gluck's bureau of miracles. One world, indivisible.

After a dozing time, Suzanna returned with a collection of clothes, and laid them beside him.

‘I'm going to make a round of the lookouts…….' she said, Til see you later.'

He thanked her for the clothes, and began to dress. This was his second borrowed skin in twenty-four hours, and it was -predictably, given its source - odder than anything Gluck had supplied. He took pleasure in the collision of styles: a formal waistcoat and a battered leather jacket; odd socks and pigskin shoes.

‘Now that's the way a poet should dress,' Lemuel declared when he came back for Cal. ‘Like a blind thief.'

‘I've been called worse.' Cal replied. There was talk of food?'

‘There was,' said Lem, and escorted him away from the fire. Once his flame-dazzled eyes had grown accustomed to the half-light he realized there were Kind everywhere; perched in the branches or sitting on the ground between the trees, surrounded by their earthly goods. Despite the wonders these people had been intimate with, tonight they resembled any band of refugees, their eyes dark and full of caution, their mouths tight. Some, it was true, had decided to make the best of what might well be their last night alive. Lovers lay in each others' arms exchanging whispers and kisses; a singer poured a lilt onto the air, to which three women were dancing, the stillness between their steps so profound they were lost amongst the trees. But most of the fugitives were inert, keeping themselves under lock and key for fear their dread show.

The smell of coffee came to greet Cal as Lem brought him into a clearing where another fire, smaller than the one he'd slept by, was burning. Half a dozen Kind were eating here. He knew none of them.

‘This is Calhoun Mooney,' Lem announced. ‘A poet.'

One of the number, who was sitting in a chair while a woman carefully shaved his head, said:

‘I remember you from the orchard. You're the Cuckoo.'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you come to die with us?' said a girl crouching beside the fire, pouring herself coffee. The remark, which would have been judged an indiscretion in most company, drew laughter.

‘If that's what it comes to,' said Cal.

‘Well don't go on an empty stomach,' said the shaved man. As his barber towelled the last of the suds from his scalp Cal realized he'd grown his mane to conceal a skull decorated with rhymthic pigmentation from the gaze of the Kingdom. Now he could parade it again.

‘We've only got bread and coffee,' Lem said.

‘Suits me,' Cal told him.

‘You saw the Scourge,' said another of the company.

‘Yes,' Cal replied.

‘Must we talk about that, Hamel?' said the girl at the fire.

The man ignored her. ‘What was it like?' he asked.

Cal shrugged. ‘Huge,' he said, hoping the subject would be dropped. But it wasn't just Hamel who wanted to know; all of them - even the girl who'd objected — were waiting for further details.

‘It had hundreds of eyes ...' he said. ‘That's all I saw, really.'

‘Maybe we could blind it,' Hamel said, drawing on his cigarette.

‘How?' said Lem.

‘The Old Science.'

‘We don't have the power to keep the screen up much longer,' said the woman who'd been doing the shaving.

‘Where are we going to get the strength to meet the Scourge?'

‘I don't understand this Old Science business,' said Cal, sipping at the coffee Lem had brought him.

‘It's all gone anyway,' said the shaved man.

‘Our enemies kept it,' Hamel reminded him. That bitch Immacolata and her fancy-man - they had it.'

‘And those who made the Loom,' said the girl.

‘They're dead and gone,' Lem said.

‘Anyway,' said Cal. ‘You couldn't blind the Scourge,'

‘Why not?' said Hamel.

‘Too many eyes.'

Hamel wandered to the fire and threw the stub of his cigarette into its heart.

‘All the better to see us with,' he said.

The flame the stub burned with was bright blue, which made Cal wonder what the man had been smoking. Turning his back on the fire Hamel disappeared between the trees, leaving silence in his wake.

‘Will you excuse me, poet?' said Lem. ‘I've got to go find my daughters,'

‘Of course,'

Cal sat down to finish his meal, leaning his back against a tree to watch the comings and goings. His short sleep had only taken the edge off his fatigue; eating made him dozy again. He might have slept where he sat but that the strong coffee he'd drunk had gone straight to his bladder, and he needed to relieve himself. He got up and went in search of a secluded bush to do just that, rapidly losing his bearings amongst the trees.

In one grove he came upon a couple dancing to the late-night music from a small transistor radio - like lovers left on a dance floor after the place had closed, too absorbed in each other to be parted. In another place a child was being taught to count, its abacus a string of floating lights its mother had spoken into being. He found a deserted spot to unburden himself, and was fumbling to do the buttons of his borrowed trousers up again when somebody took hold of his arm. He turned to find Apolline Dubois at his side. She was in black as ever, but was wearing lipstick and mascara, which didn't flatter her. Had he not seen the all but empty vodka bottle in her hand her breath would have told him she'd had a good night's drinking behind her.

‘I'd offer you some,' she said, ‘but it's all I've got left.'

‘Don't worry,' he told her.

‘Me?' she said. ‘I never worry. It's all going to end badly whether I worry or not.'

Drawing herself closer to him, she peered at his face.

‘You look sick,' she announced. ‘When did you last have a shave?'

As he opened his mouth to answer her something happened to the air around them. A tremor ran through it, with darkness at its heels. She forsook her hold on him instantly, dropping the vodka bottle in the same moment. It struck his foot, but he managed to bite back his curse, and was thankful for it. Every sound from between the trees, music or mathematics, had ceased utterly. So had the noises in the undergrowth, and from the branches. The wood was suddenly death-bed quiet, the shadows thickening between the trees. He put his arm out and clutched hold of one of the trunks, fearful of losing all sense of geography. When he looked around Apolline was backing away from him, only her powdered face visible. Then she turned away, and that too was gone.

He wasn't entirely alone. Off to his right he saw somebody step from the cover of the trees and hurriedly kick earth over the small fire by which mother and child had been engaged in their lessons. They were there still, the woman's hand pressed over her off-spring's mouth, the child's eyes turned up to look at her, wide with fear. As the last light was snuffed out Cal saw her mouth ask a question of the man, who in answer jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Then the scene went to black.

For a few moments Cal stayed put, vaguely aware that there were people moving past him - purposefully, as if to their stations. Rather than remain where he was, clinging to the tree like a man in a flood, he decided to go in the direction the fire-smotherer had pointed, and find out what was going

on. Hands extended to help him plot his course as he navigated his way between the trees. His every movement produced some unwelcome sound: his pigskin shoes creaked; his hands, touching a trunk, brought fragments of bark down in a pattering rain. But there was a destination in sight. The trees were thinning out, and between them he could see the brightness of snow. Its light made the going easier, and by it he came to within ten yards of the edge of the wood. He knew now where he was. Ahead lay the field where he'd seen Novello playing; and louring over it, the white slope of Rayment's Hill.

As he started to move closer somebody put their hand on his chest, halting him, and a nod from a dogged face at his side directed him back the way he'd come. But somebody crouched in the shrubbery closer to the edge of the trees turned to look at him, and with a raised hand signalled that he should be allowed passage. It was only when he came within a yard of her hiding-place that he saw it was Suzanna. Though they were very near the perimeter of the trees, and the snow-light was almost lurid, she was difficult to see. A rapture was wrapped around her like a veil, strengthening on her exhaled breaths, weakening on the intake. Her attention was on the field again, and the hill beyond. Snow was still falling without pause; it seemed to have erased his tracks, though not, perhaps, unaided.

‘It's here,' she whispered, without looking his way. He studied the scene before him. There was nothing out there but the hill and the snow. ‘I don't see - ‘ he began.

She silenced him with a touch, and nodded towards the young trees at the outskirts of the wood. ‘She sees it,' her whisper said.

He studied the saplings, and realized that one was flesh and blood. A young girl was standing at the very edge of the trees, her arms extended, her hands holding onto the branches of saplings to left and right.

Somebody moved out of the half-light and took up a position beside Suzanna. ‘How close?' he said.

Cal knew the voice, though the man was much changed.

‘Nimrod?'

The golden eyes glanced at Cal without registering anything, then looked away, before returning with recognition in them. Apolline had been right, Cal thought; he must look bad. Nimrod stretched his arm in front of Suzanna and clasped Cal's hand tightly. As he broke contact again the girl at the perimeter let out the tiniest exclamation, and Nimrod's question - ‘How close?' - was answered.

Shadwell and Hobart had appeared at the top of the hill. Though the sky at their backs was dark, they were darker still against it, their ragged silhouettes unmistakable.

‘They found us,' Nimrod breathed.

‘Not yet,' said Suzanna.

Very slowly, she stood up, and as if on that signal a tremor - the twin to the rumour that had first hushed the wood -ran through the trees. The air seemed to darken even further.

They're strengthening the screen,' Nimrod whispered.

Cal wished he had some useful role to play in this, but all he could do was watch the hill and hope the enemy would turn its back and go searching elsewhere. He'd known Shadwell too long to believe this likely, however, and he wasn't surprised when the Salesman started down the slope towards the field. The enemy was obstinate. He'd come to give the gift of Death he'd spoken of in Chariot Street, and he wouldn't be satisfied until he'd done so.

Hobart, or the power inside him, was lingering on the brow of the hill, where it could better survey the terrain. Even at this distance the flesh of its face flared and darkened like embers in a high wind.

Cal glanced behind him. The Kind were just visible, standing at regular intervals between the trees, their concentration focused on the rapture that stood between them and slaughter. Its redoubled effect was strong enough to invade his eyes, though he stood within the walls. For a moment the darkness of the wood grew tenuous, and it seemed he could see through it, to the snow on the other side.

He looked back at Shadwell, who had reached the bottom of the slope and was scanning the landscape ahead of him. It was only now, seeing the man clearly, that Cal's thoughts returned to the jacket that Shadwell had lost or thrown away, and which he too had abandoned in his travels. It was out there somewhere in the field behind Rayment's Hill, where his frozen fingers had let it fall. As Shadwell started to walk towards the wood, he stood up, and whispered:

‘ ... the jacket...'

Suzanna was close to him, her answer barely audible.

‘What about it?'

Shadwell had stopped walking again, and was scrutinizing the snow in front of him. Was some vestige of Cal's and Novello's tracks still visible?

‘Do you know where the jacket is?' Suzanna was saying.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘On the other side of the hill.'

The Salesman had raised his eyes once more, and was staring at the scene in front of him. Even from a distance it was clear the expression on his face was one of puzzlement, even suspicion. The illusion was apparently holding; but for how long? On the hill above him Uriel spoke, its words carrying on the snow-laden wind.

‘I smell them,' it said.

Shadwell nodded, and took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting it beneath the flap of his coat. Then he returned his gaze to the scene in front of him. Was it the chill that made him squint, or was he seeing a ghost of something against the glare of snow?

‘We're just going to get weaker,' said Suzanna. ‘Unless we get help.'

‘From the jacket?' Cal said.

‘It had power once,' she replied. ‘Maybe it still does. Can you find it?'

‘I don't know.'

‘That's not the answer we need.'

‘Yes. I can find it.'

She looked back towards the hill. Shadwell had decided to rejoin Uriel, and was climbing the slope once more. The Angel

had sat Hobart's body in the snow, and was staring up at the clouds.

‘I'll go with you,' said Nimrod.

They'll be able to see us from up there.'

‘We'll make a detour. Get out round the back.' He looked at Suzanna. ‘Yes?' he said.

‘Yes,' she replied. ‘Go on, while there's still time.'

He was away at speed, Cal in tow, weaving through the trees and the Kind standing between them. The strain of keeping the shield up against the sight of man and Angel was taking its toll; several of the rapturers had collapsed; others were plainly near it.

Nimrod's sense of direction was faultless; they came out on the far side of the wood, and instantly threw themselves face down in the snow. The depth of the fall was in their favour; they could practically tunnel through it, keeping the drifts between them and the hill as much as possible. But the snow could not protect them all the way; there were patches of open ground that had to be crossed if they weren't to follow a route so hopelessly circuitous they'd not reach their target before dawn. The wind was blowing sheets of loose snow before it, but in the gaps between them they had a clear view of the hill, and those on the summit - should they chance to look down - had a clear view of them. They'd caught the rhythm of the wind however, laying low when it died down and making a run when a gust gave them cover. By this means they crept within thirty yards of the flank of the hill unseen, and it seemed the most dangerous part of the route was over, when the wind suddenly dropped, and in the lull Cal heard Shadwell's triumphant voice.

‘You!' he said, pointing down at them. ‘I see you!'

He stepped down the side of the hill a few yards, then went back up to alert Uriel, who was still gazing at the sky.

‘Run for it!' Cal yelled to Nimrod, and giving up any attempt at concealment they both ploughed on through the snow, Cal leading now as he went in search of what he'd lost. A glance up at the summit showed him that Shadwell had roused Hobart, who had stood up. The man was stark naked - indifferent to the blizzard - his body blackened by fire and smoke. Any moment, Cal knew, that same fire would find Nimrod and himself.

He began to run again, expecting the flame at any moment. Three stumbling steps, and still it didn't come. Now four, and five; six, seven. Still there was no avenging flame.

Bafflement made him look once more towards the hill. Shadwell was still at the summit, imploring the Angel to do its damnedest. But in the window between one gust of snow and the next Cal saw that Uriel had other business, distracting it from its role as executioner.

He started to run again, knowing that he and Nimrod had been granted a precious chance at life, but unable to stop himself mourning the sight of Suzanna, climbing the hill to meet the Angel's gaze.

III

ON THE HILL

1

She had no plan in mind. But as she'd watched Nimrod and Cal creeping towards the hill it had become perfectly apparent that unless there was some diversion they'd be sighted and killed. She was not about to ask for volunteers. If anyone was going to distract the Angel's fire it surely had to be her; after all, she and Hobart had played this game of Dragons before; or a variation upon it.

Rather than step directly out through the screen, and so give Shadwell his target, she slipped through the trees and out at the flank, moving from drift to drift until she was some distance from the wood. Only then did she move out into full view of the Dragon.

Had she been faster she might have prevented Shadwell from seeing Cal and Nimrod at all; as it was she heard his accusing cry moments before she emerged from hiding. Twenty seconds later and Shadwell would have succeeded in rousing Hobart, and the death inside him, to action. But when the Salesman climbed back up the hill Hobart's eyes were already on her, and wouldn't be dislodged.

Before making this appearance she'd watched the two figures at the summit intently, to see if she could make any sense of the politics between them. But their behaviour - or more particularly Uriel's - confounded her. Surely the Scourge had as much appetite for the chase as Shadwell; but it seemed utterly distracted from the matter in hand, staring up at the sky as if mesmerized. Only once was it moved to show its fire, when - without any apparent cue - the body of the man it occupied spontaneously combusted, flames cocooning him until his clothes were burned from his back, and his flesh seared. He'd not moved an inch as the fire did its work, but had stood in the midst of his pyre like a martyr, gazing over the empty landscape until - again, without any apparent reason - the fire died.

Now, as she climbed to meet him, she saw just how traumatized Hobart's body was. The flames that had enveloped him were only the most recent of countless assaults his flesh had endured. He'd been wounded several times, some of the holes ineptly sealed; his hands were horribly maimed; his face -hair and brows burned away - was barely recognizable. But seeing the way his eyes stared from his blistered features one impression was confirmed: he, and perhaps the force within him, was somehow mesmerized. There was no sign that he felt pain from his wounds, nor shame that he stood naked before her, not the glorious victim of his dreams but a column of wretchedness, stinking of death and cooked meat.

Meeting that blank stare the fear necessity had kept at bay so far rose up in her. Was it possible she could get beyond this trance, to the Hobart with whom she'd shared that story of Maiden, Knight and Dragon? If she could, perhaps she might survive this confrontation; or at least waylay the enemy long enough for the Kind to prepare new defences.

Shadwell had seen her now. Beside Hobart the man looked positively dapper, but his face told another story. His features, which had pretended so much in their time, were manic now, the sham of courtesy he produced for her more pitiful than ironic.

‘Well, well,' he said. ‘And where did you appear from?'

His hands were plunged deep into his pockets to keep them warm, and they stayed there. He made no attempt to take hold of her, or even approach her. He knew, presumably, she could not escape the summit alive.

‘I came to see Hobart,' she told him.

‘I'm afraid he isn't here,' Shadwell replied.

‘Liar,' she said.

Hobart's eyes were still on her. Was there a flicker of response in them?

‘I'm telling you the truthI Shadwell protested. ‘Hobart's gone. This thing ... it's just a shell. You know what's inside. And it isn't Hobart.'

‘That's a pity,' she said, playing his civilized game while it gave her time to think.

‘No loss,' said Shadwell.

‘But we had unfinished business.'

‘You and Hobart?'

‘Oh yes.' She was looking straight at the burned man as she spoke. ‘I was hoping he'd remember me,'

At this, Hobart's head sagged a little, then rose again: a primitive nod.

‘You do remember,' she said.

The eyes didn't leave her for an instant.

‘Are you the Dragon -' she asked him.

‘Shut up,' said Shadwell.

‘Or the Knight?'

‘I told you to be quiet!' He made a move towards her, but before he could get within striking distance Hobart raised his arm and put the black stump of his hand on Shadwell's chest. The Salesman stepped back from it.

He's frightened, Suzanna thought. The stain of fear she saw around his head only confirmed what his face already admitted. There was more power here than he knew to handle, and he was afraid. But he wasn't so cowed as to keep his silence.

‘Burn her,' he said to Hobart. ‘Make her tell us where they are,'

Her gut convulsed. She hadn't taken that possibility into account: that they'd torture her to make her tell. But it was too late for flight. Besides, Hobart showed no sign of obeying Shadwell's instructions. He simply watched her, the way the Knight in the book had watched her: a wounded creature at the end of his story. And she in her turn felt as she'd felt then: both afraid, and strong. The body before her was a receptacle for devastating power, but if she could just reach into it – oh so gently - and speak with the Hobart whose secret heart she knew, perhaps, just perhaps, she could coax him into siding with her against the Scourge. Dragons had weaknesses; maybe Angels did too. Could she make him raise its throat to her? ‘I... remember you,' he said.

The voice was faltering, and pained, but it was clearly that of Hobart, not his tenant. She glanced sideways at Shadwell, who was watching this encounter with bewilderment, then back at Hobart, catching sight, as she did so, of something flickering in the unsealed holes of his body. Her instinct was to step back, but he stopped her.

‘Don't,' he said. ‘Don't... leave me. It won't harm you.' ‘You mean the Dragon?'

‘Yes,' he said. The snow's made it slow. It thinks it's in the sand. Alone.'

Now the Scourge's inactivity began to make some vague sense. Perched on the hill, surveying the wilderness of snow, it had lost its grip on the present. It was back in the void it had occupied for the millennium, where it waited for fresh instructions from its Maker. Shadwell was not that Maker. He was dust; human dust. It no longer heard him.

But it knew the smell of the Kind; it had howled as much from this very spot. And when the raptures failed - as soon they must - the wilderness would no longer keep it from its duty. Seeing them, it would do what it had come to do, not for Shadwell's sake, but for its own. She had to get to it quickly. ‘Do you remember the book?' she said to Hobart. He took a moment to answer her. In the silence the furnace in his body brightened again. She began to fear that his words of comfort had been misplaced; that these two Law-givers were so much a part of each other that the breaking of one trance had alerted the other. Tell me ...' she said. The book….'

‘Oh yes,' he told her, and with his recognition the light intensified. ‘We were there ...' he said, ‘ ... in the trees. You, and me, and - ‘

He stopped talking, and his face, which had been slack, suddenly contorted. There was panic there, as the fires rose to the lips of his wounds. From the corner of her eyes she could see Shadwell stepping back slowly, as if from a ticking bomb. Her mind careered around for a delaying tactic, but none came.

Hobart was raising his broken hands to his face, and in the gesture she comprehended how they'd been destroyed. He'd tried to stymie the Scourge's fire once before, and his flesh had been forfeit.

‘Burn her,' she heard Shadwell mutter.

Then the fire began to come. It didn't appear suddenly, as she'd expected, but oozed from the hurts he'd sustained, and from his nostrils, and mouth, and prick, and pores, running in fiery rivulets through which dans of the Angel's intention ran, still slothful, but growing stronger. She'd lost the race.

Hobart was not quite beaten, however; he was making one last, gallant attempt to speak his mind. The chattering ceased as he forced his mouth open. But before he could utter a word Uriel ignited his spittle. Fire licked up across his face, the geometries behind it sharpening. Through the flames Suzanna saw Hobart's eyes on her, and as their gaze met he threw back his head.

She knew the gesture, of old. He was offering her his throat.

‘Kill me and be done,' the Dragon had said.

Hobart was demanding that same kindness now, in the only way left to him.

Kill me and be done.

In the book she'd hesitated, and lost her chance to fell her enemy. This time she wouldn't falter.

She had the menstruum as a weapon, and as ever it knew her intention better than she did. Even as her thoughts embraced the notion of murder it was flying from her, crossing the space between her and Hobart in a silver instant and snatching hold of him.

His throat was offered, but it was not his throat it took, it was his heart. She felt the heat of his body fly back along the river into her head, and with it the rhythm of his life. His heart was beating in her grasp; she clasped it tight, no trace of guilt touching her. He wanted death, and she had it to give: that was a fair exchange.

He shuddered. But his heart, for all its sins, was brave, and beat on.

Fire was coming from everywhere about him. He wept it, shat it, sweated it. She could smell her hair singeing; steam rose between them as the snow melted and was boiled away. The geometries were taking control of the fire now; shaping it, aiming it. Any moment, it would be upon her.

She gripped his heart tighter still, feeling it swell against her hold. Still beating, still beating.

Just as she thought it was beyond her, the muscle gave up its work, and stopped.

From somewhere in Hobart a noise rose which his lungs could not have made nor his mouth expelled. But she heard it clearly, and so did Shadwell: part sob, part sigh. It was his last word. The body in which she still had her mind's fingers was dead before the sound had faded.

She began to call the menstruum out of him, but the Scourge caught its tail and an echo of the void came to meet her along the stream. She had a taste of its lunacy, and its pain, before she snatched her lethal strength back to her.

There was an empty moment, while steam rose and snow fell. Then the sometime Knight and Dragon Hobart fell dead at her feet.

‘What have you done?' Shadwell said.

She wasn't sure. Killed Hobart, certainly. But beyond that? The corpse face down in front of her showed no sign of occupancy; the fires from it were suddenly extinguished. Had Hobart's death driven Uriel out of the man, or was it simply biding its time?

‘You killed him,' Shadwell said.

‘Yes.'

‘How? Jesus .... how?'

She was readying herself to resist him if he attacked, but it wasn't murder in his look, it was disgust.

‘You're one of the magicians, aren't you?' he said. ‘You're here with them.'

‘I was,' she told him. ‘But they've gone, Shadwell. You've missed your chance.'

‘You might trick me with your deceits,' he said, his voice full of pretended innocence. ‘I'm only human. But you can't hide from the Angel.'

‘You're right,' she said. ‘I'm afraid. Like you.'

‘Afraid?'

‘It's got nowhere to hide now,' she reminded him, casting a look at Hobart's corpse. ‘Won't it need somebody? It's either you or me, and I'm rotten with magic. You're clean.'

For a fraction of a second Shadwell's facade dropped, and she had her words confirmed; even amplified. He was not simply afraid; he was terrified.

‘It won't touch me,' he protested, his throat constricted. ‘I woke it. It owes me its life.'

‘Do you think it cares?' she said. ‘Aren't we all fodder to a thing like that?'

In the face of her questions his pretence to indifference failed him; he began to run his tongue over his lips, top then bottom, over and over.

‘You don't want to die, do you?' she said. ‘At least, not like that.'

This time it was his glance that went to the body on the ground.

‘It wouldn't dare,' he said. But he dropped his volume as he spoke, as though fearful it would hear him.

‘Help me,' she said to him. ‘Together we might be able to control it.'

‘It's not possible,' he replied.

As he spoke the body in the warm mud between them burst into incandescent flames. This time there was nothing left for Uriel's fire to devour but muscle and bone; Hobart had been stripped as naked as a man could get. The skin burst, blood boiling up in a hundred places. Suzanna stepped back to avoid being caught by the rain of heat, and in doing so put herself within Shadwell's reach. He took hold of her, placing her body between him and the fire.

But the Scourge had already left Hobart, and had taken itself into the hill. The ground began to shake, the din of grinding rock and pulped earth rising from beneath them.

Whatever Uriel had gone underground to devise Suzanna wanted to run from it while there was time, but Shadwell still had hold of her, and much as she wished to let the menstruum strike him down he was the only ally she had left. He it was who'd woken the beast, and been its companion. If anyone knew its weaknesses, he was the man.

The roaring in the ground climbed to a crescendo, and with it, the whole hill tipped. She heard Shadwell cry out, then he fell, taking Suzanna with him. His hold probably saved her life, for as they rolled down the slope the ground at the summit of Rayment's Hill erupted.

Rock and frozen earth were carried skywards, then hailed down on their heads. She had no time to protect herself from its descent. She was still spitting snow from her mouth when something struck her on the back of the neck. She tried to keep hold of consciousness, but it slipped her, and she slid into the night behind her eyes.

2

Shadwell was still beside her when she came round, his hold on her so fierce it had deadened her arm from elbow to fingertip. At first she thought the blow she'd sustained had affected her sight, but it was a fog that had closed off the world around them; a cold, clinging fog that seemed to encompass the entire hill. Through it Shadwell watched her, his eyes two slits in his filthied face.

‘You're alive -' he said.

‘How long have we been here?'

‘A minute or two.'

‘Where's the Scourge?' she asked him.

He shook his head. ‘It's not reasoning any more,' he said. ‘Hobart was right. It doesn't know where it is. You've got to help me -'

That's why you stayed.'

‘ - or else we'll neither of us get out of here alive.'

‘So how?' she said.

He gave her a small, twitching smile.

‘Placate it,' he said.

‘Again: how?'

‘Give it what it wants. Give it the magicians.'

She laughed in his face.

Try again,' she said.

‘It's the only option. Once it's got them it'll be satisfied. It'll leave us alone.'

‘I'm not going to give it anything.'

His grip strengthened. He crabbed his way through the muck to her side.

‘It's going to find them anyway, sooner or later,' he said. He was on the verge of sobbing like a baby. There's no chance they can survive this. But we can. If we can just make the bastards show themselves. It won't want us once it's got them. It'll be satisfied.' His face was inches away; every tic and tear was hers to scrutinize. ‘I know you hate me,' he said. ‘I deserve it. So don't do it for me, do it for yourself. I can make it worth your while.'

She looked at him with something close to awe, that even now he could bargain.

‘I've got stuff stashed away,' he said. ‘A fortune. You name your price. It's all yours. Whatever you want. Free, gratis and - ‘

He stopped.

‘Oh sweet Jesus,' he said.

Somewhere in the fog, something had begun to howl: a rising wail which he recognized and feared. He seemed to decide that it was no use hoping she'd aid him, for he let her go and rose to his feet. The fog was equally dense on every side; it took him several seconds to elect an escape route. But once he had, he was away at a stumbling run, as the howl -which could only be Uriel - shook the hill.

Suzanna stood up, the fog and her aching head making the surroundings swim. The ground was so churned it was impossible to tell where the slope of the hill lay, so she couldn't orient herself to get back to the wood. All she could do was run, as fast as possible, away from the howl, blood coursing down the back of her neck. Twice she fell; twice her body made contact with an earth that seemed ready to open up beneath her.

She was on the verge of collapse when a figure loomed from the fog ahead of her, calling her name. It was Hamel.

‘I'm here - ‘ she yelled to him, over the din of the Scourge. He was with her in seconds, leading her over the treacherous ground and back towards the wood.

3

Luck was on Shadwell's side. Once he was away from the hill itself the fog thinned and he realized that either by instinct or accident he'd chosen the best direction to run in. The road was not far from here; he'd be away down it before the Angel had finished on the hill; away to some safe place on the other side of the globe where he could lick his wounds and put this whole horror out of his head.

He chanced a look over his shoulder. His blessed flight had already put a good distance between himself and the scene of devastation. The only sign of the Angel was the fog; and that still clung to the hill. He was safe.

He slowed his pace as he came within sight of the hedgerow which bounded the road; all he had to do now was follow it until he came to a gate. The snow was still falling, but his sudden turn of speed had got him heated; sweat was running down his back and chest. Even as he unbuttoned his coat, however, he realized the warmth was not self-generated. The snow was turning to slush beneath his feet, as heat rose from the ground, and with it, a sudden spring, shoots bursting from the earth and rising like snakes towards his face. As they flowered he realized the depth of his error. They came with fire for sap, these blossoms, and at their hearts were Uriel's eyes, Uriel's countless eyes.

He could go neither forward nor back; they were all around him. To his horror he heard the Angel's voice in his head, as he had first heard it back in the Rub al Khali.

Do I dare? — it said, mocking his boast to Suzanna.

DO I DARE?

And then it was upon him.

One moment he was only himself. A man; a history.

The next he was pressed to the lid of his creaking skull as the Angel of Eden claimed him.

His last act as a man with a body he could call his own was to shriek.

4

‘Shadwell,' she said.

‘No time to enjoy it,' Hamel remarked grimly. ‘We've got to get back before they start to move out.'

‘Move out?' she said. ‘No, we mustn't do that. The Scourge is still here. It's in the hill.'

‘No choice,' Hamel replied. ‘The raptures are almost used up. See?'

They were within a few yards of the trees now, and there was indeed a smoky presence in the air; a hint of what was concealed behind the screen.

‘No strength left,' Hamel said.

‘Any sign of Cal?' she asked. ‘Or Nimrod?'

He gave a short, dismissive shake of the head. They were gone, his look said, and not worth fretting for.

She glanced back at the hill, hoping for some sign that contradicted him, but there was no movement. Fog still held court at the summit; the upturned earth around it was still.

‘Are you coming?' he wanted to know.

She followed him, her head throbbing, the first step taken through snow, the second through thicket. There was a child crying in the depths of the hideaway, its sobs inconsolable.

‘See if you can keep her quiet, Hamel,' she said. ‘But gently.'

‘Are we going or aren't we?' he said.

‘Yes,' she conceded. ‘We have to. I just want to see Cal back first.'

There's no time,' he insisted.

‘All right,' she said. ‘I heard you. We'll go.' He grunted, and turned away from her. ‘Hamel?' she called after him.

‘What?'

Thank you for coming after me.'

‘I want to be out of here,' he said plainly, and went in search of the sobbing, leaving her to return to the lookout post that offered the best view of the hill.

There were several Kind keeping watch there.

‘Anything?' she asked one of them.

He didn't need to answer. A murmur amongst them drew her gaze to the hill.

The fog cloud was stirring. It was as if something in its midst had taken a vast breath, for the cloud folded upon itself, growing smaller and smaller, until the force that haunted it became visible.

Uriel had found the Salesman. Though it was Shadwell's body that stood in the mud of Rayment's Hill, the eyes burned with a seraphic light. From the purposeful way it surveyed the field there could be little doubt that the distraction which had made it mild had passed. The Angel was no longer lost in a remembered void. It knew both where it was and why. ‘We've got to move!' she said. The children first.'

The order came not an instant too soon, for even as the message ran through the trees, and the fugitives began their last dash for safety, Uriel turned its murderous eyes on the field below Rayment's Hill, and the snow began to burn.

IV

SYMMETRY

1

No trace of the route Cal had described across the field behind the hill was visible when he and Nimrod reached there; the blizzard had erased it. All they could do was guess at the path he would have followed, and dig in the vicinity in the hope of chancing upon the lost package. But it was nearly hopeless. His route to the hill had been far from direct - fatigue had made him reel and wander like a drunkard; and since then the wind had re-arranged the drifts so that in some places they were deep enough to bury a man upright.

The driving snow obscured the hill-top most of the time, so Cal could only guess at what was happening up there. What chance did anyone have of survival against Shadwell, and the Scourge?: little or none, probably. But then Suzanna had brought him out of the Gyre alive, hadn't she?, against all the odds. The thought of her on the hill, distracting Uriel's fatal gaze, made him dig with greater devotion to the task, without really believing they had a hope in hell of finding the jacket. Their digging steadily took he and Nimrod further apart, until Cal could no longer see his fellow searcher through the veil of snow. But at one point he heard the man cry out in alarm, and turned to see a flickering brightness in the wastes behind him. Something was burning on the hill. He started back towards it, but sense prevailed over heroics. If Suzanna was alive, then she was alive. If she was dead, he was wasting her sacrifice turning his back on the search.

As he began again, any pretence to a system in the work forgotten, the roaring in the hill began, climaxing in the din of erupting earth. This time he didn't look back, didn't try to pierce the veil for news of love; he simply dug, and dug, turning his grief into fuel for the task.

In his haste he almost lost the treasure in the act of finding it, his hands already covering the glimpse of paper before his distracted brain had registered what it was. When it did he began to dig like a terrier, shovelling snow behind him, not quite daring to believe he'd found the package. As he dug the wind brought a voice to him, then whipped it away again, a cry for help, somewhere in the wilderness. It wasn't Nimrod, so he kept digging. The voice came back. He looked up, narrowing his eyes against the onslaught. Was there somebody wading through the snow some way off from him? Like the voice, the sight came and went.

The package was just as evasive. But even as he was thinking he'd been mistaken, and there was nothing to find, his frozen fingers closed on the thing. As he pulled it from the drift the paper, which was almost mush, tore, and the contents fell in the snow. A box of cigars; some trinkets; and the jacket. He picked it up. If it had looked unremarkable at Gluck's house it looked more so now. He hoped somebody in the wood had a clue as to how to unleash its powers, because he certainly didn't.

He looked around for Nimrod, to give him the news, and saw two figures trudging towards him, one holding the other up. The bearer was Nimrod; the man he was helping - the same Cal had heard and glimpsed presumably - so swathed in protective clothing he was unrecognizable. Nimrod had seen the prize Cal had lifted up to show him, however, and was coaxing the man to pick up his speed, yelling something to Cal as he approached. The wind stole the words away, but he yelled them again as he came closer.

‘Is this a friend of yours?'

The man he was all but carrying lifted his snow-encrusted face, and fumbled with the scarf that was wrapped around its lower half. Before he'd pulled it down, however, Cal said:

‘Virgil?'

The scarf came away, and Gluck was looking up at him with a mixture of shame and triumph on his face in equal measure.

‘Forgive me,' he said. ‘I had to be here. I had to see.'

‘If there's anything left to see,' Nimrod shouted over the din of the wind.

Cal looked back towards Rayment's Hill. Between the gusts it was apparent that the top of the hill had been entirely blown open. Over it a pall of smoke was rising, its underbelly lit by flames.

The wood...' he said. Forgetting Nimrod and Gluck, he began to plough through the snow, back towards the hill and what lay beyond.

2

There was nothing arbitrary in the Scourge's attack. It was systematically destroying the field and the surrounding region in the knowledge that sooner or later its eyes would find the creatures whose proximity it smelt. In the trees there was an organized retreat; the children, accompanied by either guardians or parents, moving through to the rear of the wood and out into the open air. Few others moved, but stayed at their stations, preserving the integrity of their hiding place. Suzanna wasn't certain if this was defiance or fatalism; perhaps a little of both. But however deep they dug, their store of raptures was all but exhausted. It was a matter of seconds rather than minutes now before Uriel-in-Shadwell's glance reached the trees. When it did so the woods would burn, invisible or no.

Hamel was at Suzanna's side as she watched the Angel's approach.

‘Are you coming?' he said.

‘In a moment.'

‘It's now or never.'

Maybe it would be never, then. She was so transfixed by the formidable power being unleashed in front of her, she couldn't

avert her astonished gaze. It fascinated her that strength of this magnitude should be turned to the sordid business of atrocity; something was wrong with a reality that made that possible, and offered no cure for it, nor hope of cure.

‘We have to go,' said Hamel.

Then go,' she told him.

Tears were welling in her eyes. She resented them coming between her and seeing. But with them she felt the menstruum rising - not to protect her but to be with her at the last; to give her its little sum of joy.

The Angel raised its sights. She heard Hamel shout. Then the trees to the right of where she stood burst into flames.

There were cries from the depths of the wood as the screen was breached.

‘Scatter!' somebody yelled.

Hearing its prey, the Scourge caused Shadwell's face to smile: a smile to end the world with. Then the light in the bloated body intensified, as Uriel mustered a final fire, to destroy the rapturers forever.

A beat before it broke, a voice said:

‘Shadwell?'

It was the Salesman's name that had been called, but it was Uriel that looked round, its calamitous glance momentarily postponed.

Suzanna's gaze left the Scourge, and went to the speaker.

It was Cal. He was walking across the smoking ground that had once been the snow-covered field at the bottom of the hill; walking straight towards the enemy.

At the sight of him she didn't hesitate to break cover. She stepped out from the margin of the trees and into the open air. Nor did she come alone. Though she didn't take her eyes off Cal for an instant she heard whispers and footfalls at her side as the Kind appeared from hiding; a gesture of solidarity in the face of extinction which moved her profoundly. At the last, their appearance here said, we're together. Cuckoo and Kind, part of one story.

None of which prevented an awed voice, which she recognized as that of Apolline, from saying:

‘Is he out of his fucking mind?' as Cal continued to advance across the earth Uriel had laid waste.

Behind her, the crackling of flames mounted, as the fire, fanned by the wind, spread through the woods. Its glow washed the ground, throwing the shadows of the Kind towards the two figures in the field ahead. Shadwell, with his fine clothes torn and singed, his face paler than a dead man's. Cal in his pigskin shoes, the flame-light picking out threads in his jacket.

No; not his jacket: Shadwell's. The jacket of illusions.

How could she have been so slow as not to have noticed it earlier? Was it the fact that it fitted him so well, though it had been made for a man half his size again? Or was it simply that his face had claimed all her attention, that face which even now had about it a purposefulness she'd come to love.

He was within ten yards of the Scourge, and now stood still.

Uriel-in-Shadwell said nothing, but there was a restlessness in the Salesman's body that threatened to detonate at any moment.

Cal fumbled to unbutton the jacket, frowning at the ineptitude of his fingers. But he got the trick of it on the fourth attempt, and the jacket fell open.

That done, he spoke. His voice was thin, but it didn't shake.

‘I've got something to show you,' he said.

At first Uriel-in-Shadwell offered no response. When it did it was not the possessor who replied but the possessed.

There's nothing there I want,' the Salesman said.

‘It's not for you,' Cal replied, his voice growing stronger. ‘It's for the Angel of Eden. For Uriel.'

This time neither Scourge nor Salesman replied. Cal took hold of the front panel of the jacket, and opened it, exposing the lining.

‘Don't you want to look?' he enquired.

Silence answered him.

‘Whatever you see,' he went on. ‘It's yours.'

Somebody at Suzanna's side whispered: ‘What does he think he's doing?'

She knew; but didn't waste precious effort on a reply. Cal needed all the power she could will to him: all her hope, all her love.

Again, he addressed the Scourge.

‘What do you see?' he said.

This time he got an answer.

‘Nothing.'

It was Shadwell who spoke.

‘I See. Nothing.'

‘Oh Cal,' Suzanna breathed, catching the flicker of despair that crossed his face. She knew exactly what he was thinking, and shared his doubt. Were the raptures in the jacket dead? Had they withered away without victims to nourish them, leaving him standing before Uriel unarmed?

A long moment passed. Then, from somewhere in the belly of the Angel there rose a low moan. As it came Shadwell's mouth opened, and he spoke again. But it was quietly this time, as if to himself; or the thing inside himself.

‘Don't look,' he said.

Suzanna held her breath, not daring to believe his words were a warning. Yet how else could they be construed?

‘You do see something,' Cal said.

‘No,' Shadwell replied.

‘Look,' said Cal, opening the jacket as wide as he could. ‘Look and see.'

Suddenly, Shadwell began yelling.

‘It's lies'.' he screeched, his body shuddering now. ‘It's all corruption!'

But the moan that was still rising from the creature inside him drowned his warnings out. This was not the howl Suzanna had heard in the rock of Rayment's Hill: not an insane cry of rage. This sound was sad, infinitely sad, and as if answering sound with light the jacket, whose threads she'd feared bankrupt, began to brighten.

Immediately Shadwell's warnings began again, tinged with a new hysteria.

‘Don't!' he shouted. ‘Don't, damn you!'

The Scourge was deaf to the appeals of its host, however. It had its innumerable eyes on the lining of the jacket, willing forth from it a vision only it could see.

For Cal the moment carried terror and joy in such confusion he could not tell one from the other. Not that it mattered: events now were out of his hands. All he could do was stand his ground while the jacket performed whatever deceits it had power to perform.

He hadn't meant to put it on; that hadn't been a part of his plan at all. Indeed he'd had no plan; he'd just plunged through the snow, hoping he wasn't too late to intervene. But events had already outpaced him. Uriel's glance had found the Kind's refuge, and was destroying it. The jacket which he'd dug for was redundant; the Kind's bluff was called. But the sight of the Salesman put another thought into his head: that the jacket's raptures had worked when Shadwell had worn it, and that he had no better option now than to do the same.

No sooner had he slipped his arms into it than it fitted itself to him, snug as a surgeon's glove. He felt its embrace as a bargain made. Hereafter it was a part of him, and he of it.

Even now, as he stood before Uriel, he could feel it tapping into him, seeking his humanity to add spice to the illusion it was creating. The Angel's gaze was fixed on the lining, entranced, the face it wore becoming more distorted with every breath Shadwell wasted on his pleas and predictions.

‘It'll deceive you!' he roared. ‘It's magic! Do you hear me?'

If the Angel was aware of his panic, it didn't comprehend it. Or if it comprehended, it didn't care. The jacket's genius for seduction was rising to its greatest triumph. All it had enthralled hitherto were Cuckoos, whose hearts were malleable and sentimental, and whose desires scarcely rose above the pedestrian. But the dream-life of the entity which now gazed into it was of a different order entirely. Uriel had no halcyon childhood to mourn, nor lovers to pine for. Its mental powers, though they'd been long left to sterility, were immense, and the jacket's raptures were pressed to their limits to produce an image of what it most desired.

The garment had begun to writhe and ripple on Cal's back.

its seams creaking around him as though it could scarcely bear what was being asked of it, and was ready to fly apart. He felt he might do the same if this wasn't over soon. The jacket's demands upon him were becoming intolerable, as it dug deeper and ever deeper into him, trawling his soul for the inspiration to match the Angel's need. His torso and arms had grown numb; his hands no longer owned the strength to hold the jacket open. It was left to the forces loose in the lining to spread the coat wide, while he stood in the flux of power, his mind assaulted by fragments of whatever Uriel was yearning after. He could make only partial sense of them.

There was a planet of light he saw, turning over and over before him, its immensity grazing his lips. There was a flame sea, lapping at a beach of stone and cloud. There were forms his mind's eye couldn't endure to look at making riddles of their breath.

But they were all fugitive visions, and when they'd gone he was back standing on the same dead earth, his body being wasted by Uriel's hunger. The jacket had reached its limits. It had begun to disintegrate, threads being sucked from its warp and weft and burned away before him.

But Uriel wasn't about to be cheated; its eyes drew on the fabric, demanding it make good the promise Cal had voiced. Beneath this assault the jacket finally capitulated, but in its destruction Uriel's demand was answered. The lining burst, and from it rose the image Uriel's appetite had shaped, its brightness blinding Cal.

He heard Shadwell bellow, then his own cries rose over the din, pleading with the Angel to take its dream to its bosom.

Uriel didn't hesitate. It wanted this vision as much as Cal wanted rid of it. Through a haze of anguish Cal saw Shadwell's body begin to bloat as the Angel inside him prepared to show itself. The Salesman could only wail his despair as he felt himself plucked into the air, Uriel's geometries bearing him up. His skin was tight as a drum, stretched to the limits of its tolerance; his mouth a toothlined O as his cartilage tore and sinew snapped. Then he broke, his body bursting to release its captive, the fragments incinerated in the instant they flew by the glory his destruction unleashed.

Before him Cal saw plainly the incarnation he'd only glimpsed in the fog on Chariot Street: Uriel's eyes, Uriel's geometry. Uriel's hunger.

And then its magnetism drew the illusion its will had made out from the ruins of the jacket and up to meet it.

The vision stood revealed: as bright as Uriel, and as vast, as well it had to be, for the image the raptures had made was another Uriel, the Seraph's equal in every way. As it rose up the vestiges of the jacket fell away from Cal, but its degeneration did not compromise the creature it had parented. Uriel's mirror stood unbowed before the power that had summoned it into being.

Cal, robbed both of his strength and of the images he'd peeped on, tasted a terrible banality. He had no energy left to look up and wonder at the majesty above him. His eyes were turned inward, and he saw only emptiness there. A desert, in which his dust blew with the dust of all the things he'd ever loved and lost; blew to the end of time and knew neither rest nor meaning.

His body surrendered, and he fell as though he'd been shot, while the dust in his head whipped him away, into the void. He witnessed nothing of what followed. Suzanna saw his collapse. Ignoring the giants that towered over the burning wood, she went to his aid. Overhead the Angels hovered like twin suns, their energies filling the air with invisible needles. Careless of their stings she bent her back to the task of dragging Cal away from this rendezvous of spirit and spirit. She was beyond fear now, or hope. The first and only necessity was to have Cal safe in her arms. Whatever followed would follow. It was beyond her.

Others had come to her assistance: Apolline, Hamel, and from the far side of the field, Nimrod. Together they picked Cal up and took him out of the region of needles, laying him down gently where the ground was softest.

Above them, the confrontation was reaching a new plateau. Uriel's form had become impossibly complex, its anatomy transforming at the speed of its thought; part engine, part citadel; all meticulous fire. And its conjured companion was

matching it change for change, darts passing between them like needles threaded with fire, drawing them closer and closer still, until they were locked like lovers.

If there had once been a distinction between Uriel the real and Uriel the imagined that no longer pertained. Such divisions were for Cuckoos, who believed they lived both inside their heads and out; to whom thought was only life's shadow, and not its own true self.

Uriel knew better. It had needed the Old Science to seduce it into confessing its profoundest desire: simply, to see its own true face, and seeing it know how it had been before loneliness had corrupted it.

Now it embraced that remembered self, and learned its lesson on the instant. The pit of its insanity had been as deep as the stars it had descended from were high. Unreminded of its nature it had sunk into obsession, devoted to a dead duty. But looking on itself - seeing the glory of its condition - it shed that lunacy, and shedding it, looked starward.

There were heavens it had business in, where the age it had wasted here was but a day, and its grief, all grief, an unknown state.

On the thought, it rose, it and itself one triumphant splendour.

There were clouds above. It was away between them in moments, leaving only a rain of dwindling light on the faces of those who watched it pass from sight.

‘Gone,' said Lo, when even the light had died, and there was only a gruel of snow shed from above.

‘Is it over then?' Apolline wanted to know.

‘I think it is,' said Hamel. There were tears pouring down his cheeks.

A fresh gust of wind had lent new fervour to the flames that were devouring the wood. It did not matter much. They no longer had need to take refuge there. Perhaps tonight marked an end to refuges.

Suzanna looked down at Cal, whom she was cradling as she'd once cradled Jerichau. But Jerichau had died in her arms: Cal would not; she swore he would not. He had not escaped the furnace of the jacket's destruction unmarked: the skin of his face and his chest were burned, or perhaps stained. But that was the only outward damage.

‘How is he?' said a voice she didn't know.

She looked up to meet the harried gaze of a Cuckoo like herself, muffled up in several layers of clothing.

‘Suzanna?' he said. ‘My name is Gluck. I'm a friend of Calhoun's.'

‘You're welcome,' said someone.

Gluck beamed.

‘He's not going to die,' said Suzanna, stroking Cal's face. ‘He's just sleeping awhile.'

‘He's had a busy nightI said Nimrod, and there were tears on his stoical face too, pouring down.

V

THE SLEEPWALKER

1

There was a wilderness, and Cal was dust in the wilderness, and his hopes and dreams were dust in the wilderness, all driven before the same unforgiving wind.

He had tasted Uriel's condition, before its healing. He'd shared the spirit's loneliness and desolation, and his frail mind had been snatched up into the void and left there to die. He knew no way out. In the final arithmetic his life was a wasteland: of fire, of snow, of sand. All of it, a wasteland, and he would wander there ‘til he could wander no more.

2

To those who were tending him, he seemed simply to be resting; at least at first. They let him sleep, in the belief that he'd wake healed. His pulse was strong, his bones unbroken. All he needed was time to recover his strength.

But when he woke the following afternoon, in Gluck's house, it was immediately clear that something was profoundly amiss. His eyes opened, but Cal was not in them. His gaze was devoid of recognition or response. It and he were as blank as an empty page.

Suzanna couldn't know - none of them could - what he'd shared with Uriel during their confrontation, but she could make an educated guess. If her experience of the menstruum had taught her anything it was that every exchange was a two-way street. Cal had conspired with Immacolata's jacket to give Uriel its vision, but what had the lunatic spirit given him in return?

When, after two days, there was no sign of improvement in his state, they called in expert help, but though the doctors exhausted their tests on him they could find nothing physiologically wrong. This was not a coma, they ventured, so much as a trance; and they knew no precedent for it, except perhaps sleepwalking. One of their number even went so far as to suggest the condition might be self-induced, a possibility Suzanna did not entirely dismiss.

There were no reasons they could find, they finally announced, as to why the patient wasn't up and awake and living a healthy life. There are plenty of reasons, Suzanna thought, but none that she could begin to explain. Perhaps he had simply seen too much; and the surfeit had left him indifferent to being.

3

And the dust rolled on.

Sometimes he thought he heard voices in the wind; very distant voices. But they disappeared as quickly as they came, and left him alone again. That was for the best, he knew, because if there was a place beyond this wasteland and the voices were trying to coax him back, it would bring him pain, and he was better off without it. Besides, sooner or later the inhabitants of that otherwhere would come to him. They'd wither and die and join the dust in the wilderness. That was how things happened; always had and always would.

Everything went to dust.

4

Each day Suzanna would spend several hours talking to him, telling him how the day had gone, and whom she'd met mentioning the names of people he knew and places he'd been in the hope of stirring him from his inertia. But there was no response; not a glimmer.

Sometimes she'd get into a quiet rage at his apparent indifference to her, and tell him to his vacant face that he was being selfish. She loved him, didn't he know that? She loved him and she wanted him to know her again, and be with her. Other times she'd come close to despair, and however hard she tried she couldn't stem the tears of frustration and unhappiness. She'd leave his bedside then, until she'd composed herself again, because she was fearful that somewhere in his sealed head he'd hear her grief and flee even further into himself.

She even tried to reach him with the menstruum, but he was a fortress, and her subtle body could only gaze into him, not enter. What it saw gave her no cause for optimism. It was as if he was uninhabited.

5

Outside the window of Gluck's home it was the same story: there were few signs of life. This was the hardest winter since the beginning of the century. Snow fell on snow; ice glazed ice.

As January crept to its dismal end people began not to ask after Cal as frequently. They had problems of their own in such a grim season, and it was relatively easy for them to put him out of their minds because he wasn't in pain; or at least in no pain he could express. Even Gluck tactfully suggested that she was giving too much of her time over to nursing him. She had her own healing to do; a life to be put in some sort of order; plans to be laid for the future. She'd done all that could be expected from a devoted friend, and more, he argued, and she should start to share the burden with others.

‘I can't,' she told him.

‘Why not?' he asked.

‘I love him,' she said, and ‘I want to be with him.'

That was only half the answer of course. The other half was the book.

There it lay in his room, where she'd put it the day they'd returned from Rayment's Hill. Though it had been Mimi's gift to Suzanna, the magic that it now contained meant she could no longer open it alone. Just as she'd needed Cal at the Temple, in order to use the Loom's power, and charge the book with their memories, so she needed him again if they were to reverse the process. The magic hung in the space between them. She could not reclaim on her own what they'd imagined together.

Until he woke the Stories of the Secret Places would remain untold. And if he didn't wake they'd remain that way forever.

6

In the middle of February, with the false hint of a thaw in the air, Gluck took himself off to Liverpool, and, by dint of some discreet enquiries in Chariot Street, located Geraldine Kella-way. She returned with him to Harborne to visit Cal. His condition shocked her, needless to say, but she had that brand of pragmatism that would find her the first brewing tea after Armageddon, and within an hour she'd taken it in her stride.

She returned to Liverpool after two days, back to the life she'd established in Cal's absence, promising to visit again soon.

If Gluck had hoped her appearance would do something to break the deadlock of Cal's stupor, he was disappointed. The sleepwalker went on in the same fashion, through February and early March, while outside the promised thaw was delayed and delayed.

During the day they'd move him from his bed to the window, and there he'd sit, overlooking the expanse of frost-gripped ground behind Gluck's house. Though he was fed well, chewing and swallowing with the mechanical efficiency of an animal; though he was shaved and bathed daily; though his legs were exercised to keep the muscles from wasting, it was

apparent to those few who still came visiting, and especially to Suzanna and Gluck, that he was preparing die.

And the dust rolled on.

VI

RAPTURE

1

If Finnegan hadn't called she would never have gone down to London. But he had, and she did, as much at Gluck's insistence than from any great enthusiasm for the trip.

As soon as she got out of the house, however, and started travelling, she began to feel the weight of recent weeks lift a little. Hadn't she once said to Apolline that there was comfort in their at least being alive? It was true. They would have to make the best they could of that, and not sigh for things circumstance had denied them.

She found Finnegan less than his usual spritely self. His career at the bank had floundered of late, and he needed a shoulder to curse upon. She supplied it happily, more than content to hear his catalogue of woes if they distracted her from her own. He reminded her, when he'd finished complaining and gnashing his teeth, of something she'd once said about never marrying a banker. As it seemed he'd soon be out of a job would she think again?, he wondered. It was clear from his tone he didn't expect yes for an answer, and he didn't get it, but she told him she hoped they'd always be friends.

‘You're a strange woman,' he said as they parted, apropos of nothing in particular. She took the remark as flattery.

2

It was late afternoon by the time she got back to Harborne. Another night of frost was on its way, pearling the pavements and roofs.

When she went upstairs she found the sleepwalker had not been put in his chair but was sitting against heaped pillows on the bed, his eyes as glazed as ever. He looked sick; the mark Uriel's revelation had left on his face was livid against his pallid skin. She'd left too early to shave him that morning, and it distressed her to see how close to utter dereliction such minor neglect had left him looking. Talking quietly to him about where she'd been, she led him from the bed over to the chair beside the window, where the light was a little better. Then she collected the electric razor from the bathroom and shaved his stubble.

At the beginning it had been an eerie business, ministering to him like this, and it had upset her. But time had toughened her, and she'd come to view the various chores of keeping him presentable as a means to express her affection for him.

Now, however, as dusk devoured the light outside, she felt those early anxieties rising in her again. Perhaps it was the day she'd spent out of the house, and out of Cal's company, that made her tender to this experience afresh. Perhaps it was also the sense she had that events were drawing to a close; that there would not be many more days when she would have to shave him and bathe him. That it was almost over.

Night was upon the house so quickly the room soon became too gloomy to work in. She went to the door and switched on the light.

His reflection appeared in the window, hanging in the glass against the darkness outside. She left him staring at it while she went for the comb.

There was something in the void ahead of him, though he couldn't see what. The wind was too strong, and he, as ever, was dust before it.

But the shadow, or whatever it was, persisted, and sometimes - when the wind dropped a little - it seemed he could almost see it studying him. He looked back at it and its gaze held him, so that instead of being blown on, and away, the dust he was made of momentarily stood still.

As he returned the scrutiny, the face before him became clearer. He knew it vaguely, from some place he'd gained and lost. Its eyes, and the stain that ran from hairline to cheek, belonged to somebody he'd known once. It irritated him, not being able to remember where he'd seen this man before.

It was not the face itself which finally reminded him, but the darkness it was set against.

The last time he'd seen this stranger, perhaps the only time, the man had been standing against another such darkness. A cloud, perhaps, shot with lightning. It had a name, this cloud, but he couldn't remember it. The place had a name too, but that was even further out of his reach. The moment of their meeting he did remember however; and some fragments of the journey that led up to it. He'd been in a rickshaw, and he'd passed through a region where time was somehow out of joint. Where today breathed yesterday's air, and tomorrow's too.

For curiosity's sake he wanted to know the stranger's name, before the wind caught him and moved him on again. But he was dust, so he couldn't ask. Instead he pressed his motes towards the darkness on which the mysterious face hovered, and reached to touch his skin.

It was not a living thing he made contact with, it was cold glass. His fingers fell from the window, the heat-rings they'd left shrinking.

If it was glass before him, he dimly thought, then he must be looking at himself surely. The man he'd met, standing against that nameless cloud: that was him.

A puzzle awaited Suzanna when she returned to the room.

She was almost certain she'd left Cal with his hands on his lap, but now his right arm hung at his side. Had he tried to move? If so it was the first independent motion he'd made since the trance had claimed him.

She started to speak to him, softly, asking him if he heard her, if he saw her, or knew her name. But as ever it was a oneway conversation. Either his hand had simply slipped from his lap or she'd been mistaken and it hadn't been there in the first place.

Sighing, she set to combing his hair.

He was still dust in a wilderness, but now he was dust with a memory.

It was enough to give him weight. The wind bullied him, wanting its way with him, but this time he refused to be moved. It raged against him. He ignored it, standing his ground in the nowhere while he tried to fit the pieces of his thoughts together.

He had met himself once, in a house near a cloud; he'd been brought there in a rickshaw while a world folded up around him.

What did it signify, that he'd come face to face with himself as an old man? What did that mean?

The question was not so difficult to answer, even for dust. It meant he would at some future time step into that world, and live there.

And from that, what followed? What followed?

That the place was not lost.

Oh yes! Oh God in Heaven, yes! That was it. He would be there. Not tomorrow maybe, or the day after that; but someday, some future day: he would be there.

It was not lost. The Fugue was not lost.

It took only that knowledge, that certainty, and he woke.

‘Suzanna,' he said.

3

‘Where is it?' was the only question he voiced, when they'd finished with their reunion. ‘Where's it hidden?'

She went to the table and put Mimi's book into his hands.

‘Here,' she said.

He ran his palm over the binding, but declined to open it.

‘How did we do that?' he said. He asked the question with such gravity; like a child.

‘In the Gyre,' she said. ‘You and I. And the Loom.'

‘All of it?' he said. ‘All of it, in here?'

‘I don't know,' she told him in all honesty. ‘We'll see.'

‘Now.'

‘No, Cal. You're very weak still.'

‘I'll be strong -' he said simply,' - once we open the book.'

She could not better such argument; instead she reached across and laid her hands on Mimi's gift. As her fingers laced with his the lamp above their heads flickered and went out. Immersed in darkness they held the book between them, as she and Hobart had once held it. On that occasion it had been hatred that had fuelled the forces in the pages; this time it was joy.

They felt the book begin to tremble in their custody, growing warm. Then it flew out of their hands towards the window. The icy glass shattered and it disappeared, tumbling away into the darkness.

Cal got to his feet, and hobbled to the window; but before he'd reached it the pages rose, unbound, like birds in the night outside, like pigeons, the thoughts the Loom had inscribed between the lines spilling light and life. Then they swooped down again, and out of sight.

Cal turned away from the window.

The garden,' he said.

His legs felt as though they were made of cotton-wool; he needed Suzanna's support to get him to the door. Together they started down the flight.

Gluck had heard the sound of breaking glass, and was half way up the stairs to investigate, a mug of tea in his hand. He'd seen wonders in his time, but the sight of Cal, telling him to get outside, outside, left him open-mouthed. By the time he'd found a question to ask, Cal and Suzanna were already half way down the second flight of stairs. He followed; into the hallway, and through the kitchen to the back door. Suzanna was unbolting it, top and bottom.

Though there had been winter at the window, it was spring that awaited them on the threshold.

And in the garden itself, spreading even as they watched, the source of that season: the home of their joy forever; the place they'd fought and almost died to save:

The Fugue.

It was emerging from the book's scattered pages in all its singular majesty, defying ice and darkness as it had defied so much else. The months it had spent amongst the tales in the book had not been wasted. It came with fresh mysteries and enchantments.

Here, in time, Suzanna would rediscover the Old Science, and with it heal ancient breaches. Here too, in some unimaginable year, Cal would go to live in a house on the borders of the Gyre, to which one day a young man would come whose history he knew. It was all ahead, all they'd dreamed together, all waiting to be born.

Even at that moment, in sleeping cities across the Isle, the refugees were waking and rising from their pillows, and throwing open the doors and windows, despite the cold, to meet the news the night was bringing them: that what could be imagined need never be lost. That even here, in the Kingdom, rapture might find a home.

After tonight there would be only one world, to live in and to dream; and Wonderland would never be more than a step away, a thought away.

Together Cal, Suzanna and Gluck left the house and went walking in that magic night. Ahead, there were such sights unfolding: friends and places

they'd feared gone forever coming to greet them, eager for shared rapture.

There was time for all their miracles now. For ghosts and transformations; for passion and ambiguity; for noon-day visions and midnight glory. Time in abundance.

For nothing ever begins.

And this story, having no beginning, will have no end.