Harvest (52 page)

Stort explained what he had discovered in the Library and that a place called Veryan in Cornwall was their destination.

‘All that remains is to decide how to get there,’ said Stort.

‘By road,
I
say,’ said Barklice.

‘Rail’s my preference,’ said Jack.

‘River and sea, my hearties,’ said Arnold, ‘safer they be and more certain.’

Katherine reminded them that the West Country was where she had thought they should go in the first place.

But it was late and they were tired and further talk of where they went next had to wait until the following day.

Blut couldn’t sleep. The world felt dark and he suddenly missed his Lord Sinistral, whose presence and clear mind seemed needed just then. Naturally Blut had heard of
wyrd, and it had never made sense to him to think that things happened for no reason. There was an order to the Universe, a harmony to its
musica
. Things didn’t just happen. Wyrd was
the Mirror’s purpose which, often, was beyond the hearts and minds of mortal kind to understand.

Restive as he was, he was last asleep and first to wake, staring down at the mist on the meadow by the Severn below them to their left and at Half Steeple, which was misty too so that only its
church steeple rose out of the cloud.

As Blut watched and the others began to wake he saw a single rook fly out of the mist from the tree where the others had been.

Backwards.

Blut’s heart and mind froze. He understood at once the significance of what he saw because Katherine had explained it. It now seemed certain that the end of days was coming.

He thought of drawing the others’ attention to it but did not. What, after all, could they or anyone do?

He had thought of Sinistral the night before and now knew he was right to do so. He was needed, needed by them all, needed by the Hyddenworld.

So, too, was someone else perhaps, who had been left behind: Arthur.

‘He’ll be safe with Mister Pike,’ they had all said, one way and another.

Blut was suddenly not so sure.

The rook flew backwards slowly, as if its time had run out. An old bird with feathers missing and grey claws hooked with age who couldn’t keep up with life any more, as it disappeared into
the mist over Half Steeple.

L
ater that morning Arnold said, ‘The river b’aint herseln. She worn’t herseln comin’ here and I can tell you straight she
be a lot worse now. I’m movin’ our craft up a bit to safety. Come and help, lads.’

Jack and Terce went with Arnold and dragged his boat higher, in among trees.

He got a lanyard and tied her loosely, ‘so she’m able to move about a bit.’

‘After this we go south,’ said Stort.

After what? No one knew exactly.

Festoon and Blut shook their heads, thinking they must get back towards Brum.

Terce said he wanted to go back to Mortaine, which wasn’t that far.

Jack and Katherine weren’t sure but they’d go with Stort to Cornwall. Barklice said the same but, ‘It’s a long way that Cornwall, a long, long way and I doubt
you’ll get there for Samhain.’

Only Arnold was certain of anything.

‘We’m must and we will, my doubting lads and lady one, and this Mallarkhi will see you right!’

A short while later Jack suddenly shouted, ‘The river down there, below the tributary . . . it’s flowing
backwards
.’

The sky darkened as they stared, the air stilled and chilled.

Stort took out his monocular.

He confirmed it was.

‘Aye, it be,’ agreed Arnold, looking away as if he was watching a death.

Jack switched direction and pointed past where the tributary joined the Severn.

‘That . . . the . . . two . . . parts . . . of the river . . . are flowing
towards
each other and . . . By the Mirror! Look
there!
’

‘Got it, eleven o’clock from the church,’ murmured Stort helpfully, ‘maybe a shade more.’

‘Um . . . wow!’ said Katherine.

‘It looks like there’s steam rising from that point of the river . . .’ said Jack.

‘Not steam but a column of spray,’ explained Stort.

He studied the odd phenomenon.

‘It’s caused by the meeting of two flows of water from opposite directions sending fine droplets of water upwards as they flow into the ground and plummet downward into . . . into
the bowels of the Earth! What we are witnessing is a sudden, localized but catastrophic collapse in the Earth’s surface to form a sinkhole into which both parts of the river are flowing. That
column of spray is the inevitable result.’

They watched in awe as the pale, swirling column rose higher, until it caught a glint of sun, and a small, intense rainbow came and went at its topmost point.

Their attention shifted to the town itself, which, from their position, looked as if it was going about its normal morning business. Most people seemed not to have seen the drama developing in
the river. But a quarter of a mile beyond it, traffic was slowing and drivers opened their windows to stare.

From their vantage point they could see that the church was a very old one and the centre of a medieval cluster of cottages. At that moment, no place could have seemed prettier, no place more
settled and secure. Its prosperous past seemed resonant in every stone and kerb, its happy present at every garden gate and turn, and its future . . . its secure future soared aloft into the blue
sky from the church itself in the form of its steeple.

The church stood on a slight rise, surrounded by a large, well-mown churchyard whose many gravestones, most covered in lichen, a few with thick ivy, others very new from a recent interment, with
flowers mouldering, told of the centuries of the thousand-year-old community.

Stort and the others shifted their attention back to the sight of three mallard flying up suddenly from the water, disturbing others along the river and its banks, who flew up as well. The
river’s surface now grew darker and troubled, its strange flow slowing, the rushes along its bank trembling.

Four cygnets they had seen earlier reappeared, now flapping their downy and inadequate wings as they desperately paddled against a current that was trying to push them backwards, towards the
sinkhole. The swans that had been with them had gone.

Then one of the cygnets gave up, turned sideways and was sucked suddenly into the foaming spray. Then another, a third and finally the fourth, clawing frantically at water too powerful for it,
squawking for its life before, like a switch turned off, its pale body was gone into darkness.

The sun still shone, the column of spray rose no higher than before, people continued what they were doing, many not yet noticing the plight of the water fowl, the river’s peculiar flows
and the sinkhole.

They felt they now were witnesses to an unstoppable drama, a horrible thing. But if their instinct was to turn and flee and find shelter, their feet were rooted to the ground.

Then, as suddenly as it had risen, the column of spray fell back and the river’s flow returned to normal.

‘The hole must have filled,’ said Stort, ‘and the river’s now flowing the way it should again.’

Three of the mallard swung back into view, circled the place where the sinkhole had been and landed on the bubbling water. Cows in an adjacent field, which had stopped grazing, began to do so
again.

Finally, a pair of swans appeared high across the fields, heads and necks pointing their way back home. They came in low, circling as the mallard had done, and landed in the field between the
cows and the river. They immediately set off for the water’s edge.

‘They’re looking for the cygnets,’ said Katherine softly.

One of the church bells rang a solitary note. Just that, no more. A toll of time.

The crisis seemed over; all felt good.

But Stort was shaking his head uneasily.

‘Do not be deceived,’ he said. ‘When the Earth shows her teeth she is rarely so benign as to limit her appetite to four cygnets. This is surely the calm before the
storm.’

The surface of the river was now so calm and flat that it reflected once more the light in the sky above. It snaked away into the distance.

A couple more mallard returned to the water.

The swans made their cumbrous way through the longer grass and reeds back onto the river, looking for their young.

‘Seems all right to me,’ said Jack, turning towards his ’sac to heave it on and encourage the others to move. He felt they were too exposed.

But he took no more than a couple of steps.

‘
Jack!
’

Stort had no need to point, Katherine was already doing so.

No sooner had the swans settled down, ruffling their wings to rid them of excess water, than one of them was suddenly sinking beneath the water, straining its neck, scrabbling its paddles,
trying desperately to raise its wings against the weight of water that flowed over them.

Its mate turned its way, stared, and then began to sink as well, but backwards, rump and wings first, feet scrabbling in thin air. Then they were gone beneath the surface entirely, one after the
other like stricken ships unable to stay afloat a second longer.

Even as this was happening, the cows in the adjacent pasture raised their heads as one, turned and looked towards the river, and started to run in the opposite direction across the grass,
bellowing in panic as they did so. For a moment it was hard to make out what they were trying to do or why . . . but then it became all too clear.

The field was tipping backwards and they were struggling to run uphill in a field that had been flat seconds before. They were running for their lives and failing.

The sinkhole, which had so quickly come and gone, had returned, but much wider than before.

The river and the fields on either side, along with hedgerows and trees, a water butt and a fence, were being tipped backwards and down into it as the first cow lost its balance entirely and
slipped into a mixture of water and mud, its bellows stopping suddenly, its front hoofs threshing before they too were gone from sight.

The column of spray reappeared, as the north and south flows of the river crashed into each other once more.

There were flashes of silver and green in the column as if it was shot through with silk.

‘Fish,’ said Stort.

Then heavier, ragged shadows dark and green-brown. ‘Bushes and mud,’ said Katherine.

The perimeter of the sinkhole continued to expand, taking in the garden of a house, then another, then three houses.

The water climbed higher in the sky, a swirling mess of spray and foam, detritus and loose green foliage.

Then the roaring began, like that of a heavy sea at high tide on a shingle shore, on and on, unremitting.

A ragdoll dressed in pink spiralled up with legs and arms all over the place.

‘A child,’ whispered Jack wanting to run down the hill to save it, but it was already too late.

‘A little girl,’ said Katherine, reaching a hand towards her helplessly.

That was when they saw a man running wildly towards the expanding sinkhole, screaming. The sound of a man losing his child, his home, his everything, before the scream was cut short as he lost
his last possession – his own life.

As he disappeared downward into the Earth, the whole church lurched, first one way then another, its steeple wobbling before righting itself once more, masonry falling and people approaching the
churchyard sent spinning into free-fall, some smashing into the ground, others turned over and falling on their backs, one grabbing hold of a gravestone for support.

That did not help.

Like dominoes in slow motion, the gravestones began to fall, some onto grass and others onto the stone structure of the grave of which they were part, where they smashed into pieces. Here a
shattered cross, there a fallen angel and near the church itself, where a new grave had been dug, the piled earth simply covered with bunches of faded flowers, the corner of something shiny and
brown shot into view. A new coffin.

The bells of the church now started ringing at random, and violently. A sudden donging, then momentary silence, then several bells at once making a clashing of sound,
dong dong dong doi
.
. .
nnng!
It was as if a group of bell-ringers had gone mad, their tugging at the ropes frantic and out of accord with each other.

A thump of metal on wood and stone, a shout and a roar as a crack appeared in the square tower that supported the spire, a woman’s scream from within the church, shouting men and, over it
all, the first howling of dogs.

The crack in the tower of the church widened and shot up the external masonry like a tear in stiff fabric, the sound of it deeper and louder.

The ground beneath them shook. Jack stepped to the side and then in front of Stort protectively as if, even from so far away, he was in some personal danger from whatever was happening to the
village below and now threatened them where they stood. To right and left of them the leaves in the trees nearby trembled and the ground shook more, like the subtlest of shivers.

‘But . . .’ said Katherine, ‘it’s . . . there’s . . .’

It was impossible to say what was happening because suddenly so much was; and all the while the column of water where the river was, or had been, grew broader at its base, its colour darker with
the flotsam it carried spiralling round, amid which they saw dead people, living people, dogs and a last cow.

Swirling around before they sank down, lower and lower, into the open, greedy, hole.

Cars had stopped on the bridge beyond, their foolish drivers getting out to lean on the parapet and stare at the wild water below as if they felt themselves immune from its dangers.

The church steeple swayed again, the bells rang and thumped, and the edge of the widening sinkhole neared a row of old cottages. It paused as if looking at them, hesitated as if thinking and
then pushed forward straight at them. They swung as one on their axis, as if caught by a flood; someone inside one of them shoved a little window open and tried to look out. Perhaps he had slept
late, perhaps risen and fallen, concussed. Whatever his story he was thrown violently back into the darkness of his room now as the cottages tilted high and slid into the hole.