Resonance (25 page)

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘I want you to get me the keys to that underground place – the place with the creature. I want you to get me the keys to the gate.’

The woman regarded her from the corner of her dark eyes, strangely unperturbed.

‘Release my hair,’ she murmured. ‘Have some decorum.’

To Tina’s horror, wavering brightnesses began weaving themselves back into her vision as the post-convulsion clarity faded. The piercing voice – the song she now recognised as that of the creature – intruded once more on her thoughts.

With a gasp, she tightened her grip on the woman’s hair and pressed the knife harder. ‘The key,’ she insisted, blinking to stay focused. ‘The
key
.’

‘Well, aren’t you a rum girl? Full of defiance and your own grand purpose.’

The woman took hold of Tina’s wrist. Her grip was not brutal, but her flesh was hard, and hot as water-scalded china.

‘There is no need for knife-wielding here,’ she said. ‘Though I forgive you the assumption – it took me long enough to realise it myself and, as you can see, I never lost the habit of carrying one. But release my hair now,
flor
, before I take offence.’

The voice of the creature was rising – tearing and probing at Tina’s mind as if, having been unheard for so long, it was now determined to be understood.

The woman squinted keenly at her. ‘What is it?’ she asked, her voice muffled beneath that of the creature’s. ‘What do you see?’

Fingers of light pressed themselves to the woman’s face, rising and falling, curious at her curiosity, interested in her interest.

‘It is frightened,’ gasped Tina. ‘It is terrified.’

‘What is? The Angel?’

An angel. Yes, of course. An angel. Something in Tina’s brain slid into place, something relaxed. The creature straightened in her mind: waving tentacles spread to glistening wings, splayed appendages became elegant hands. An angel – how had she not seen?

‘He is frightened.’

The woman’s dark eyes read her face, intense. ‘Of course it is. Its Father has abandoned it, as He does us all.’

‘No … no. There is something … He is …’

The Angel’s voice was screaming within her:
Someone to talk to! Someone at last! Help me. Help me. Help!

She staggered to her feet. The woman rose with her.

‘There,’ said Tina, pointing, her other hand pressed to her head. ‘There!’

She stumbled forward. The woman followed her through
long grass and darkness, past hedge and white gravel, across flagstone and moon-shadow, until – standing on a plain of dew-soaked grass, gazing down towards a frozen lake – Tina pointed through fog and frost to two men in the moonlight, pulling someone slack and powerless from a hole in the ice.

Alive

I
AM NOT DEAD
, thought Harry.
I am not dead
.

He watched his water-blurred hands flex and probe as they pulled him along the under-surface of the ice. There were tiny bubbles on his knuckles, tiny bubbles fizzing against his cheeks. The world was reduced to a rush of bubbling darkness around him and the unfocused light of the moon right in front of his nose. He was not even remotely cold, and he had yet to consider taking a breath. How was this possible?

I should want to breathe
, he thought.
How is it I do not need to breathe?

He had been slammed down
hard
against something on the bottom of the lake. There had been flashes of ornate metal, glass, green light, a low pulse-deep throb as, still held fast within the grip of the current, he had been rolled helplessly. Then he had been caught in an upsurge and shot to the surface like a cork from a bottle, to slam against the roof of ice. He had not even felt the pain of the impact, and now he crawled like a bug on a window trying to find a way out.

I am not dead
, he thought.

The men’s silhouettes appeared above him again. One
of them beat down hard on the ice with his foot, and Harry felt the vibration in his hands as they once again tried to lead him into the shadow of the bridge. No matter how vehemently they insisted, he would not go back there and risk getting caught in that current. Instead, he headed for the shallows of the reed beds.

The current gradually fell away as he neared the shallows, and the water grew completely still. Harry did not like the sensation of it; it felt as if it had closed more tightly around his face. It was not cold – not at all – but for the first time, Harry realised that it felt dead. The water felt
dead
, and it pressed like corpse hands against his ears and cheeks and mouth. Harry felt a sharp thrill of fear and grabbed,
limpet-like
, to the ice. He did not want to be trapped down here in this motionless place. He did not want to be abandoned to this pallid half dark.

I’m not dead!
he thought.
I’m not dead
.

The men moved from sight, and Harry battered the ice.

I’m not dead!

They returned in a pounding of feet, a sudden blur of shadows. There was an impact, a dully muffled
bang
, and the ice overhead star-burst with cracks. It came again, a sudden downwards shadow, and the cracks brightened with another resonant
bang
.

More pounding followed. The ice fell through. Hands reached under, grabbed and pulled.

His breath came out in a vast cloud – ‘I’M NOT DEAD!’ – and all of a sudden, Harry was agonisingly cold. His teeth began to chatter. His arms and legs curled in on themselves.

‘Not dead,’ he chattered. ‘Not …’

A man laughed above him. ‘And quite the feat that is!’ he said.

There was a quick movement, and Harry was covered in something that afforded him a moment of intense, blissful heat before the water from his clothes soaked it through and he was freezing again.

‘What is amiss with you modern boys, that you wilfully fling yourselves into any available water? Is it a fashion now? Or some new ploy to separate bystanders from their jackets?’

Harry looked up into the grinning face of the carriage driver. Over the man’s shoulder, Cornelius Wolcroft watched with tight-jawed suspicion. Both men were in their shirtsleeves; neither seemed bothered by the terrible cold. Harry opened his mouth to tell them that it had been Wolcroft’s brats, that they had killed Wolcroft’s dog, but all that came out was the incoherent burr of his chattering teeth.

The carriage driver offered his hand. ‘Up you get, little magician. Tough as you are, I would wager this cold will get the better of you.’

Harry tried to move, but his body seemed locked tight. The carriage driver frowned.

‘We must get him inside, Cornelius. Perhaps light a fire. We cannot reward such resolve with a shivering death upon the ice.’

‘The chimneys will not take a fire,’ said Wolcroft. ‘It’s beyond memory since they have been swept.’

‘Then we shall wrap him in blankets and chafe him dry. Come now. He has at least earned the right to another audition.’

‘He was no great wonder as a conjurer. Another audition would do little towards proving him otherwise.’

Harry jerked out a hand and grabbed the carriage driver’s ankle.
Vincent
, thought Harry dimly.
His name is
Vincent
.

‘I escape …’ he chattered. ‘I’m an … I’m an escapologist.’

The carriage driver savoured the word. ‘Escap
ologist
,’ he said. ‘Why, that sounds marvellous. I should say the children would enjoy that immensely.’

Wolcroft’s lip was just curling around a reply when his attention was taken by something up on the shore. Vincent twisted to follow his gaze, and Harry saw surprise and then concern cross his dark face. He stood, and Harry found himself staring helplessly at his polished boots. Wolcroft’s shoes came into view, and the men stood side by side gazing towards the house.

‘Raquel,’ called the carriage driver, his voice ringing out in the frozen stillness. ‘What is the matter?’

Wolcroft stepped from sight. ‘You cannot bring that girl out in her underthings – she will catch her death!’

The woman’s voice called out in reply. ‘I did not bring her out. That boy drove her into the Angel’s arms. It seems to have robbed her of her mind.’

Tina
, thought Harry. He tried to sit but, like his thoughts, his actions were disorganised and dim. Vincent disappeared from view. A blur of conversation drifted to Harry through the chatter of his teeth.

‘The boy did nothing to her. He was here, busy drowning himself.’

‘Well, who else could it have been?’ said the woman. ‘It matters not, in any case – it is the result, not the cause, that is of interest.’

There was a small breath of silence. Then the woman’s
voice came again, much closer this time, snapping an order: ‘Leave her! She is on a mission from the Angel.’

Harry marshalled every inch of endurance he had within him and rolled to his elbows. His fingers scrabbled spastically as he tried to push himself up. Soft footsteps padded towards him. The filthy lace of a petticoat flashed past and was gone. He flung out an arm, fell flat on his face.

‘Tina,’ he croaked.

The men’s feet came into view, following behind the girl. They were accompanied by the woman, wide skirts of rustling green sweeping frost in her wake. She spoke in a fascinated whisper. ‘She is driven here by the Angel, to show us that which frightens it.’

‘It has spoken directly to her?’ asked Wolcroft. ‘Without aid? Without the board? Raquel! What did it say?’

The carriage driver said, ‘She is heading for the light.’

They passed Harry as if he were no more than a bundle of rags.

Don’t forget me
, he thought.
I’m still here
. He tried to crawl after them, but his body had its own ideas and curled back into a juddering grub-like huddle. ‘Come back,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll … I’ll show you a trick …’ He could feel his fingers shivering against his chin. The water that had dribbled from his clothes was freezing – fanning out around him in hard, curved patterns on the moonlit frost.

Through a blur of encroaching darkness Harry saw Tina, quite a distance away. She was dressed in nothing but her petticoats. Her long, dark hair was straggled loose across her shoulders, and her eyes were horribly wide. She had one hand pressed to her temple, and she was pointing at the gangrenous light that pulsed beneath her feet.

‘Here,’ she was calling hoarsely. ‘Here, here.’

The woman called Raquel clung to Wolcroft’s arm. ‘It is the Demon,’ she said.

‘No,’ whispered Harry, his eyes slipping closed. The ice had become the softest of pillows beneath his cheek. All he wanted to do was sleep.

Voices sounded, far off in the fog: Wolcroft and the carriage driver, arguing. The woman said something unintelligible, then her voice rose impatiently above the men’s: ‘…
nevertheless
, now that she’s given us her message, the seer cannot
remain
here. She must come inside, at least until we fetch her some furs.’

Footsteps came again, clunk-clunking towards him. Harry gasped and forced his eyes open in time to see Tina’s snow-crusted black stockings. She was dragging one foot after the other, her petticoats framed against the woman’s immensity of skirts, and it was obvious the woman was supporting her. They swished past with no acknowledgement of Harry’s presence, leaving him to his worm’s-eye view of the men following slowly behind.

Wolcroft was animated. ‘A
demon
, Vincent! Like I have always told you! Like the other seer told you! Now do you believe? We are dealing with instruments of the divine.’

‘There is nothing at all in what has happened to suggest the divine.’

‘The Angel
spoke to her!
It
sent her here!’

‘What of it? I do not deny the Bright Man
exists
, Cornelius. Merely that it is a creature of your fantastical god!’

‘Two
separate
seers, two
hundred
years apart!
Both
told by the Angel that there is a
demon in the lake!
Explain to me, what else can it be?’

A machine
, thought Harry.

The men were within inches of him now, their boots gritting the frost as they passed. He heard the carriage driver sigh. ‘Do not always be so ready to think in terms of the divine or the profane when there are so many other possibilities.’

‘Like
what
?’

‘A machine,’ croaked Harry. Vincent paused and Harry, desperate to keep his attention, flashed out a hand and gripping his boot. ‘A machine,’ he croaked. ‘A machine, Vincent. It’s a machine.’

Searing hot fingers grabbed his chin and raised his head. ‘Boy!’ cried Vincent. ‘Boy! Tell me of this machine! What was its nature? Describe its appearance.’

Harry gazed stupidly at him. Someone, perhaps the woman, called that they should get inside before the seer caught her death. He was dimly aware of the men lifting and dragging him, as the women led the way.

Frost glittered beneath him; reeds brushed him; then grass.

The carriage driver continued to hurl questions at the top of his bowed head, until Wolcroft snapped, ‘For goodness sake, you will get nothing from him in that state! Wait until he has defrosted.’

The air grew fragrant. The toes of Harry’s boots made harsh sounds in gravel. Stone steps jarred his shins. He was inside. The woman tutted. ‘He is leaving tracks on the floor.’ He lifted his head fractionally but could not find Tina. He let his head drop again. They passed through a warm rectangle of light, the scent of candles drifted through a door, then they were on the stairs, bumping upwards.

Suddenly they halted, and Harry found himself momentarily buried in Raquel’s skirts. The fabric smelled vaguely unpleasant – dusty and old. Jet beads scraped his cheeks. Her skirts disappeared from view as she and Tina took the last of the steps to the first-floor landing.

Harry managed to lift his head. The women were above him now, outlined in silver against the moonlit arch of the picture window. Both were gazing down at something that lay on the floor beneath the sill.

‘What is
that
doing here?’ asked Raquel.

Wolcroft made a strangled sound, and Harry fell to one side as the man abruptly let him go and ran to the women. He was saved from smacking to the hard steps by the carriage driver’s arm clamped around his chest. Out of his range of vision, Wolcroft said, ‘Oh, Raquel, I am so sorry. I had meant to dispose of it, but—’

‘Get
rid
of it,’ cried the woman. ‘I cannot bear it!’

‘I shall put it in the attic,’ Wolcroft assured her.

There was a rustle of skirts, as Raquel pulled aside. This was followed by a hesitant silence. Then Wolcroft said, ‘You … you are in my way.’

Harry half-raised his head again. Wolcroft’s shoes and the mud-stained cuffs of his trousers, and the bottom tiers of Raquel’s skirts, were on eye level with him. Standing firmly between them and the window, Harry saw Tina’s small,
black-stockinged
feet, the filthy lace trimming of her petticoat. Water pooled where the snow melted from her stockings. On the floor behind her lay something crumpled and still.