The Seventh Tide (32 page)

One of his sleeves fell back a little, and the others stared down at him.

‘When did
that
happen!?’

The sores were gone. Healed completely. There wasn’t even a scar.

Jay pulled back his other sleeve, in case they’d somehow remembered the wounds being on the wrong arm, but there was no mistake.

‘They must have closed up when the hole between the worlds did,’ said Eo softly. ‘They’ve healed.
I’m
healed.’

Adom and Jay hunkered down beside him, and they viewed the whirling of the healed Heart for a while in a curious state of numbness.

‘We did it?’ asked Eo.

‘You did it,’ said Jay, shoving him with her shoulder.

‘We
did it,’ said Eo mildly.

‘That’s right,’ said Adom. ‘We did.’

There was a deeply satisfied pause. Then, Any food left?’ asked Eo wistfully.

‘No. All gone,’ said Jay.

And we should be too,’ said Adom, heaving himself to his feet again. He gave them each a hand up and then they took a last look at the Dry Heart.

The cloud of gold sparks was changing. It was contracting in on itself, becoming smaller and denser. It was also moving further into the Heart, drawn to the G world, now orbiting blithely away from that of the Kelpies. The blue world and the black would pass each other again, when the times were as liminal as the place,
but now there was a new partner to the dance. A new, golden globe, in a new, oblique orbit.

‘I always said you had beautiful hair,’ said Jay.

Walking
out
of the mazes with no path proved to be remarkably simple. The moment they thought to look for one, the three found a door leading from the Centre. It was tucked into the corner of the far side from where they’d come in, and the succession of corridors, galleries and stairs that ensued had one thing in common: at no point did they require the travellers to make any choices. The way wasn’t straight, or short, but it took them steadily and unambiguously up and away.

The Island was ready for them to leave.

They were each bone-tired, too weary to talk, or even think much. But they drew comfort from the others being there. And at last they stumbled out of a final tunnel.

They had emerged at the lower end of the Island, on to a shoreline jumble of hexagonal basalt stumps, with the grass turf beginning only a few metres above and behind them. For a moment they just stood, desperately grateful to be in the open air again, with a sky high overhead and room to breathe. Only gradually did they begin to realize that, even after everything that had happened, something was still wrong.

Very wrong.

‘It’s the tide. It’s still out. It hasn’t changed.’ Eo’s voice was husky from all the hours of dryness. ‘Look where the moon is. We’ve been underground for
hours
, but the water’s as low as ever.’

The others looked. It was true. The eclipse was over. The moon was moon-coloured again and just lipping
the horizon. Soon it would set and the first faint paling of sunrise would show in the east. The tide
should
be at the full, higher even than usual because of being a spring tide, but instead, the same exposed expanse of sea bed still stretched out before them. Between the deeper pools, grotesquely shaped rocks glinted slimily in the moonlight. Things had died in the hours they’d been stranded. Even in the cold night air there was the whiff of incipient decay on the breeze.

‘It’s like nobody even noticed,’ said Adom dully.

‘But we
did
it,’ said Jay. ‘Haven’t they been paying attention? Everything’s supposed to be
all right
!’

What more can they ask of us
? thought Eo to himself, only half-aware of something in the background, nagging for his attention. He was so tired it took a moment for his senses to sort out which one was being called upon.

Noise. A big noise, growing bigger all the time.

He looked at the others. Jay was saying something to Adom, yelling it more like, but nothing could be heard over the thundering. Adom was looking back at her with a half-smile on his face, shrugging incomprehension. For a split second, Eo was
seeing
them both, more clearly than he ever had before. He knew (without knowing how) that many, many years from now, when he was an old G sitting, sunning on a rock, he’d only need to shut his eyes, and their faces would be there.

He reached out and took their hands. They both turned, looking enquiringly at him…

… when the water struck.

19
Adom

Back at the inlet below Devin’s hall, what happened was this…

‘He’s gone!’ cried the Bard in horror – but before Columba could reply, the boy was back again! He reappeared out of thin air, in an enormous whoosh of water that flung him full into the Holy Father’s arms and knocked him flat. Then the
water
disappeared, and there was only the boy Adom and Columba in a heap, surrounded by staring peasants and a stunned silence.

‘I… we… you…?’ stuttered the boy before fainting dead away.

That was what
happened.
By late afternoon, however, the story had… evolved. Each witness had something rich and strange to add.

‘You should have been there – what a sight –’

‘– the stink of hell –’

‘– the screaming of the demons as they tried to drag the boy away –’

‘– hang on, I didn’t hear any screaming –’

‘– the Holy Father roaring prayers like an avenging angel, pulling on the boy with all his strength, and the demons not letting go –’

‘– I didn’t hear any roaring either –’

‘– a great holy tug-of-war –’

‘– roaring and heaving –’

‘I saw it with my own eyes and I can barely believe it!’

The Bard watched the little knots of villagers meet, wave their hands about and part to form new groups.

‘The story’s spreading nicely’ he said as he turned back into his hall. They had brought the still-unconscious boy here and Columba was keeping watch over him.

Columba looked up now. ‘What really happened down there, Devin?’ he said. ‘Do you know?’

The Bard shrugged and sat down on the bench beside him.

‘The boy must be special,’ he said.

Columba frowned. ‘Brother Drostlin told me he was stupid. Lazy and thick-witted. Couldn’t learn to read or write or speak Latin to save himself.’

‘Strange,’ murmured the Bard. ‘The demons certainly thought he was worth taking an interest in. How long have you had him on lona?’

Columba shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t had time for… Brother Drostlin takes care of things now.’

Devin tutted. ‘Since when did you rely on the likes of Brother
Drostlin
? The man’s soul must be the size of a shrivelled acorn at the most! You should have bigger souls than that around you, my friend. Like this boy’s maybe? Eh?’

‘I thought he was just another boy.’

‘You were just another boy once too, as I remember it.’ Devin smiled fondly at him.

Columba grunted. ‘Though, you know,’ he continued slowly, ‘I can’t help thinking I’ve seen him before. Him, or someone like him.’

‘Look, he’s waking!’

At first Adom’s eyes were as glazed as a kitten’s, but then he seemed to focus on his surroundings and the men leaning over him.

‘Father?’ he said in a pale voice. ‘I saw you. I saw you in hell. But it wasn’t you. Not the true you. Bless me, Father, I have travelled far.’

He spoke in perfect Latin.

Columba reached out, a dazed expression on his face, and made the sign of the cross on Adom’s forehead.

‘I was told you knew no Latin,’ he murmured.

‘That’s right, Father. But I’ve learned.’ Adom lifted his arm to show Columba the wrist computer and realized, for the first time, that it was no longer there. ‘I really
have
learned!’ His smile shone.

The two men exchanged wondering glances.

‘Can you tell us what happened?’ Devin asked gently.

‘I can try’ said Adom.

When he’d finished, it was fully evening, and his listeners were silent and amazed.

The Bard stood up, drifted to the door of his hall and looked out, out over the village and the trees, to where the sea and the sky and the islands blended their colours at the day’s end. He felt the tale begin to find words for itself inside his mind, to lay itself out in shapes and
rhythms, begin to become a thing that would last for maybe a thousand years.

Behind him, in the darkening hall, Columba spoke quietly.

‘Do
I know you?’ he said. ‘From before?’

Adom smiled at him. ‘Yes, Father. I can tell you how we met, the first time, years ago, when you brought me back from the edge of death. Because that’s part of the story too.’

After a while, Devin looked back at the pair in the hall. The boy was still there, asleep again, and the holy man was still beside him, keeping watch. At first glance it looked as if no one had moved. But then he saw. In one small detail, the picture had changed.

Columba had taken Adom’s hand.

20
Jay

It was cold on the platform. There was a mean, biting wind, and the sea heaved and churned, inky black. Suddenly the lights came on, their flat glare blotting out any view of the stars.

‘… and you
didn’t
leave anything here. But you won’t take
my
word for it.
Oh
no…’

Two people emerging from the hatch had triggered the automatic lighting system. It was an old man wearing a peculiar coat, obviously a D-class or an RD, and his minder. She was providing a running commentary, in the voice of someone who is more than a little fed up.

‘…
you
have to see for yourself. Well, do so, please, and then let’s get back in out of the wind. There, what did I tell you? Nothing. Just a black sky, a black sea, a cold wind…’

‘And a dead girl,’ said the old man.

‘… a bunch of equipment, a –
what
?!

‘A dead girl. Over there. Oh, look, that’s strange. She’s throwing up.’

The minder rushed over to the sorry, sodden figure on the platform in a paddy of ‘Oh my!’s and ‘Dearie me!’s. The old man followed more calmly, with an air of detached curiosity.

The minder busily took off her own jacket and wrapped the girl up in it, clucking all the while. With a bit of effort, she got her standing and started to bundle her towards the hatch.

The girl was wobbly on her feet and more than a little woozy in her speech.

‘The Traveller wasn’t half as bad as that,’ she said blurrily ‘I’ve got a lot more sympathy for you now, Adom. I’d like to tell you that. So much I’d like to tell you all. And now I’ll never see you or hear from you again…’ She trailed off into a sob.

The words made no sense to the minder, who was anyway quite used to ignoring strangeness, but the old man, drifting along behind, gave a little yip.

‘Now
that’s
interesting. Why are you speaking sixth-century Gaelic, little girl?’ he said, coming alongside them with little skippy steps.

The whole party ground to a halt, there in the cold, black night.

‘Was I?’ said the girl, in English, now. ‘Sorry Long story.’