Seaward (9 page)

“I didn't,” Westerly said. He looked at the wall again. “My mother and I lived in two rooms, in a house with five other families. One room was for cooking and living, the other was for sleeping—we had a curtain down the middle of it, to separate the beds and make believe each of them was alone. But they weren't—no one was ever alone. Only in summer, outdoors, when we went out of the city to the river, and I could fish or just roam about.”

He took another huge bite and sat chewing reflectively. Cally watched him, curious. There was something in his
face that made it unlike any she had ever seen: the high cheekbones clear under the tanned skin, perhaps, or the jet-black pupils of the eyes.

Westerly said, “I wanted that more than anything—to be alone sometimes. Private—in a place where nobody else in the world could come.” He glanced at Cally with a quick apologetic grin. “And I went through that door into my dream, and that was what I found.”

“Were you
in
that room?”

“Of course. It was wonderful. But most of all I was . . . separate.”

“You sure were,” Cally said ruefully. She looked at her sandwich, then let her hand drop in her lap. “Westerly—where
are
we?”

He chewed. “Don't know about you, but I'm travelling.”

Cally stared at him. “How can you just say that? It's a different world we're in, it's . . . it doesn't make any sense. I mean one moment I was in—”

“Stop!” Westerly said.

Cally blinked at him, startled.

“I don't want to know where you come from,” he said. The black eyes were distanced, wary. “And where I come from . . . doesn't matter. Let's just leave that out of it.”

“I wasn't bringing it in,” Cally said frostily.

“Don't be upset,” he said. “I have to be careful, that's all. There's someone—something—following me. And
everything here is so . . . there are some things you mustn't even
say
. Until you know what the place is —and I don't know, any more than you do.” He looked at her wide eyes, and felt repentant. “Tell me how you got here.”

“I came through a mirror,” Cally said.

There was a pause.

Westerly said, “Why?”

“It's crazy!” Cally said desperately. “People can't walk through mirrors.”

“Of course they can't,” he said. “But why did you?”

“I was . . . I was trying to get away.” She pulled herself very upright and sat still, remembering. “My father was dying. He had a muscle disease they can't cure, he'd been ill for months. He went away to a special hospital, by the sea somewhere, and my mother sort of . . . faded, and she went after him. I think she was ill too but wouldn't tell me. They never liked talking about bad things. Now I think maybe they're both dead.”

She was silent for a moment. Westerly said quietly, “I'm sorry.”

“I was on my own in the house,” Cally said, “and I heard this . . . music. Like Ma singing. Only it wasn't her.” She paused again, and Westerly saw her hands clench in her lap. “I'm sure it wasn't her. It was awful, I was terrified. And I was standing near her mirror and I reached my hands out to it, and it—let me through. And I was here. In a wood.”

She stopped, and sat silent again. Then she said, “I'm going to the sea, to find them. If they're alive. I know that's where they must be, different world or not.”

Westerly pulled a flask of water out of his pack, and gave it to her. “I don't remember my father,” he said. “Maybe he's alive, somewhere. My mother said they kept him on an island. They took him away when I was a baby.”

Cally stared. “They?”

“The army,” Westerly said. “They run things, where I come from. My mother got away, with me. The city's like an ant-hill, you can just live like ants and not be noticed. She always said they'd catch up with us one day though—and they did. It took them sixteen years. They wanted me, my mother said.”

“Why would they want you?” Cally said.

Westerly looked at her gravely. “Thanks a lot,” he said.

Cally flushed. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean—”

He was grinning. “Why would the army want an ant? I don't know. Maybe they thought I'd go into politics, like my father.” The grin faded, as though it had never been really there, and Cally saw lines round his eyes and mouth that did not belong on the face of a boy. “So they came after me,” he said. “But it was her they killed.”

The room was very quiet.

“There were three black cars out in the street one day,” Westerly said. “And a hammering at the door. My mother
made me push a table against the door, and when I turned round again she'd pulled down an old rug that had always hung on the wall, and there was another little door behind it that I'd never seen before. She said, ‘Don't ask questions, do what I tell you. You must close your eyes and open that door, go through it, count to three and open your eyes. Then pick up what you will find waiting, and wherever you may find yourself, however strange or terrible things may seem, go on, as far and as fast as you can. Travelling. Seaward, to your father.'

“I couldn't understand what it was all about. I said, ‘I'm not going anywhere without you.' She wasn't listening, she said, ‘Tell no one where you come from, and trust only three—' ” He broke off; his face was closed, inturned. He took the flask from Cally and began turning it in his hands.

“They were still hammering at the door,” he said, “and they yelled that they'd shoot if we didn't open up. I was scared. I grabbed at her to pull her out of the way. But I was too late. They fired a burst through the door and it hit her full on. Slantwise across her chest. Knocked her back against the wall. She was dead before she knew anything. I've seen people dead before, but—but it was
her—
”

Cally stared at him in horrified silence. He was looking straight ahead at the wall. She reached out a hand to him and then let it drop again; the inadequacy seemed too great.

Westerly's voice was calm, empty. “I think I screamed,”
he said. “I went out of my head for a minute. I wanted to kill them, I picked up a chair because it was the only thing I could see, and then I remembered my knife and I pulled that out. They had something heavy now, they were hitting the lock where they'd shot at it. I looked at my mother lying there with her eyes open and blood all over her, and although she was dead I swear I heard her voice from somewhere, very loud, very strong, filling the room, filling my whole head.
Do what I tell you . . . however strange or terrible things may seem, do what I tell you. . . .
So I did. I put down the chair and I closed my eyes and went through the little door in the wall. I could hear the crashing as they broke the other door in. I closed my door and counted three, and there was no sound at all from the other side then, just birds singing, and a wind blowing. And when I opened my eyes I was standing somewhere I'd never seen, high up on open moorland with a track leading away down the slope. This pack was on the ground beside me, so I picked it up. And when I looked back, there was no door and no house, nothing but moorland and sky all around. So I started off along the track, because that was what she'd told me to do. And because sooner or later I knew they'd find a way to follow.”

He stopped. “And here I am,” he said.

“Oh West,” Cally said in a whisper. “That's terrible. That's —”

“Don't worry,” he said. “It seems like a long time ago now. Yes, it was the most terrible thing in the world. But it happened. And all I can do now is what she told me to do. Look for my father. Go to the sea.”

Cally said, “How did she know about the door?”

Westerly shrugged. “My mother's . . . different. Was different. She'd always known things. She taught me some of them—words, rhymes, things to do with my knife. Sometimes I'd walk into the room and she'd be talking to herself as if there were somebody else there. I was a bit scared of her, to tell you the truth. But she knew things. She even knew about you.”

“Me?”

He hesitated. “About your hands.”

Cally's hands on her lap curled into fists, covering the deformed palms. Westerly reached over and took one hand, opening it gently to show the thick scaly skin. She made a face, pulling back, but he held on. He said, “I didn't tell you the last thing my mother said. It was that I could trust three that I would meet. A man with eyes like an owl, a girl with selkie hands, and a creature in a high place.”

Cally looked at her hands. “What's selkie mean?”

“I don't know,” Westerly said. “But it has to mean you. I've already met the man with eyes like an owl. He's called Lugan.”

“Lugan's folk,” Cally said, remembering.

He looked at her quickly. “Do you know him?”

“No. It was something someone said.” She thought of Stonecutter, and hoped he had not blamed Ryan for her escape when he woke.

Westerly drank from the flask, put it back in his pack and stood up—then leaned towards the window suddenly, staring down. “God Almighty.
What's that?”

Cally's heart jumped. She turned to look, but Westerly was fumbling with the catch of the window. As he pushed the broad iron frame open, she heard from outside a long rumbling crashing roar that was in a moment dreadfully familiar.

She looked out, across the island treetops. On the far shore of the lake, like a great herd of elephants, grey formless shapes were welling out of the trees and down into the water. A faint sound of splintering came on the air, under the long rumble of stone against earth, and she saw trees quiver and fall, one after another, as the People ground them out of their way. Steadily the huge stone figures lurched forward, splashing into the lake, making straight for the island. As they disappeared under the water, others came moving after them, over them, moving into place until an edge of stone remained visible above the surface. Gradually, inexorably, like building-blocks moved by an invisible giant, they were making themselves into a causeway from the shore of the lake across to the island.

Cally felt sick with fright. “It's the People,” she said hoarsely. “Making a way for Stonecutter to come after me. I didn't think he would.”

Westerly pulled his head back in. He looked pale. “What are those things?”

“Stone. People made of stone. Nothing but stone at night, but alive in the daytime.” She looked for the sun, but it stood too high to be seen from the window. “And there's a lot of daylight left.”

“And Stonecutter?”

“A man. Sort of. He belongs to the Lady Taranis. He wanted to keep me for her.” Suddenly Cally panicked. “We've got to get out of the tower, we've got to. We'll be trapped!”

She grabbed Westerly's arm; they snatched up their packs and hurried out of the room to the landing. But the white light was there facing them; not lying quiet in the stairwell now but boiling up in a whirling white cloud over their heads, forcing them back. It seemed alive, vicious, menacing: a column of boiling white gas driving them away from the stairs.

“Quick!” Westerly pulled her towards the other door, the dark entrance with its worn legend overhead: WESTERLY.

“But it won't let me in!”

“Yes it will.”

He pulled out his knife and held it before him towards the door, point outwards, like a threat. “Open for Calliope,” he said.

And the door swung open, and Cally saw light inside, and Westerly drew her in.

T
he ceiling and one wall were dark blue, and painted overhead were the bright patterned points of the stars, glittering; even through her daze of fear Cally could see Orion there, and Betelgeuse, and the clustering Pleiades. Hanging from the ceiling, as though it sailed through the painted sky, was a beautifully detailed model of a square-rigged ship.

She saw on one wall a huge picture of an empty desert, the sand sweeping and curving in long smooth dunes; around it were shelves filled with books and glass jars and chunks of many-coloured rock, strange intricate pieces of machinery, the brilliant blue wings of a bird spread and mounted, the white grinning skull of a horse. In one corner of the room stood a small neat bed; in another a big desk, set out with pads of writing-paper and a broad white sketchbook, and jars of pens and pencils and brushes. She saw an artist's easel, and a stand holding an enormous book open at a page of illuminated manuscript written in a language
she did not understand. She thought:
this is Westerly; I don't know him—

Westerly said abruptly, “Check through the window. That one.” He jerked his head, bending over something beside the desk that she could not see.

Cally went to the tall window in the far wall and knelt on the window-seat, looking out. In the lake, the causeway had grown; steadily the massive forms of the People were lumbering along it, splashing into the water at the end, piling themselves in endless rows to form a path through the dark water. The closed window kept out the thunder of their moving, but she could feel a faint menacing vibration through her fingers on the sill.