The Wind of Southmore (4 page)

“
So,” she said grimly, her gaze focusing steadily on a crack in
the worn stone floor, “you’ve been dumped too.”

It was so
blunt, Alice almost wanted to laugh. She should have been hurt, she
supposed, or offended, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter very
much anymore. It had happened, and that was that. She had stepped
into another world here, one which seemed very far away from her
irresponsible father and his money-making schemes. This certainly
didn’t happen every day – well, the dumping part did, she supposed.
Rotten and selfish and mean – but unfortunately true. And yet – “I
thought,” she responded, wth a wry smile, “that this sort of thing
only happened in stories.”

The other
girl looked up then, her expression a strange mixture of suppressed
pain and a fierce urge to laugh. Twins. The idea of it made her
think of a pair of bookends. And yet, she was so obviously a
different person. And she was real. A small smile rose to her lips,
and the other girl laughed, a strange, ringing sound in the great
stone room.

And the
gull, watching outside the window, nodded its head sharply once,
and departed quickly, winging towards the sea.

“
I can’t believe you live in a castle,” Alice said excitedly,
as Arlen led her around the old stone foundations. The building
didn’t seem now to be the wonder she had thought it the previous
night; as Aunt Maud had advised, it was indeed in a sad state of
disrepair. The heavy grey stone walls were badly chipped and worn,
and one whole half of the castle, mostly the wing which would have
looked out over the ocean, had been destroyed. The villagers
claimed it was the force of the huge waves constantly pounding
against the walls throughout the centuries, but Arlen believed that
something more had occurred.

“
The strange thing,” she told Alice, as the two clambered over
fallen trees and blocks of stone, “is that there are burn marks all
around the outside, near the rocks on the beach. To me, it looks as
though there had been a violent battle, and that someone had
deliberately tried to set fire to it. But nobody will admit it. I
don’t care,” she crushed a stick into the damp, wet sand beneath
her trainer. It sank, but did not break. “There’s proof, whatever
they say.” She closed her eyes, trying to forget the phantom twin,
her haunted eyes pleading in the moonlight.

“
What proof?” Alice asked, curiously.

“
Something happened here,” Arlen replied. “It seems to hang
over the place – in the air, and the wind – and that sea,” she
added with a shudder. “I’ve spent hours in the library looking, but
I think that anything there may have been destroyed.”

“
Anything like what?” Alice persisted. “What are you looking
for?”

“
Oh, sorry,” Arlen pulled herself together suddenly with a
short laugh. “I forgot you didn’t know anything about the village.
I’ve had to suss it together from bits and pieces I’ve overheard
people talking about, mostly. I think it started with the
alchemist.”

“
Alchemist?” Alice wrinkled her forehead. “You mean like
– trying to make gold and that sort of
thing?”

“
Yes,” Arlen nodded. “Our family has owned this castle forever,
and he was one of them, centuries and centuries ago. They say he
barely used to leave his room, he was so busy working. I think the
villagers were afraid of him. I found a torn fragment of writing
once, hidden in one of the books in the library. It was made of a
funny material, like a very smooth, soft leather.”

“
Probably vellum,” Alice suggested knowledgeably, remembering a
medieval history lesson at school. It all seemed so long
ago.

“
Perhaps,” Arlen shrugged. “Whatever it was, I could make out
something about hiding a stone, and about the village – staying
silent, I think it was. I’m not sure. The writing was so old it was
hard to understand, and some of the letters didn’t seem to be in
the right places.”

“
They used to do things like that,” Alice offered. “What sort
of stone?”

“
I’m not sure about that,” Arlen answered. “He may have worked
on different things. There was a ruby, I know that much.” She
stopped then, and when she spoke again her voice was low. “I found
an old portrait once – it must have dated from hundreds of years
ago. I remember it was very faded and waterstained, and it had
strange tear marks in the canvas. I think it had been buried in the
sand and the soil for years, in the ruins of the alchemist’s tower.
That’s where his room used to be.” She pointed to the part of the
castle that directly faced the sea. The tower was no longer there,
having fallen into the water centuries ago, perhaps the victim of
the mysterious fire. All that remained was a crumbling outer wall,
and some skeletal box shapes, which at one point must have been
inhabited rooms. From the entrance of an old stone archway, a
narrow curved staircase, not unlike the one leading to the girls’
own tower room, led to nowhere, an end step perched on the brink of
the sea. Alice could hear the waves below, pounding against the
rocks, and she shivered. It was all very creepy.

“
I was exploring there one day,” Arlen continued, “and I saw
the frame sticking up out of the sand. When I uncovered it, I found
a picture of a very old man with a long white beard, and a strange
sort of square cap on his head. He was wearing long black robes,
and in his right hand he held a large red ruby, which he seemed to
be examining. I remember his eyes –they looked kind, but so sad,
and I wondered why.” She paused, the ancient picture clear again
before her. “But when I took it to show Aunt Maud she told me off
for scrabbling about there – said it was dangerous and I could have
been struck by falling masonry and wasn’t to go there again. And
then the picture disappeared.” She stopped and looked towards the
sea. “There’s a standing stone further up the road, towards the
village,” she said softly. “It’s called Alchemist’s Block. After
him. But I don’t know why.”

“
And what about the picture?” Alice asked.

“
I don’t know. I haven’t seen it since. I don’t know what Aunt
Maud did with it. But I have seen the ruby,” she added in a low
voice, so low that Alice could not make out what she had said, and
she felt a sudden chill crawl up her spine. She shivered, and
changed the subject.

“
You mentioned something about proof,” she said. “What is it?
Can I see it?”

But her
twin’s face suddenly took on a frightened, almost haunted
expression, and her eyes grew large and dark. “No,” she said
sharply. “Not to the beach. I don’t want to go to the beach.” She
could not forget the black, churning waters of the night before,
the pale limb slicing through them like a knife.

“
Why – ” Alice began, but her sister’s face stilled her. She
said no more, but gazed curiously at Arlen from time to time. They
were walking down the old Beach Road, and Alice couldn’t help but
notice that Arlen was keeping as far away from the beach side of it
as possible.

No one
was around and nothing stirred, save for the haunting, chilling
wail of the wind sweeping past them and rustling their hair around
their faces, as it played amongst the fronds of rushes on the sides
of the rough path. No presence disturbed them, except for the
strong odour of the ocean, an omnipotent, powerful smell, which
almost dizzied the girls’ senses.

“
You know,” after her strange experience the previous night,
Alice considered the all too obvious absence now as rather strange,
“I haven’t seen one seagull here all day. Isn’t that odd?
Especially at a beach. And there were so many of them last night,
too.”

Arlen had
started at the mention of the absence of birds, but Alice’s
following sentence drew all colour from her face. “What do you
mean, there were so many of them last night?” she asked, her voice
tense and anxious.

“
Well,” and Alice explained about her strange desertion at the
lonely station, and the thick swarm of watching birds, and the
strange voice, which she wasn’t sure had come from the mysterious
cart driver whom nobody seemed to know about. Arlen’s expression
grew more and more strained as she listened, until Alice stopped,
afraid that the girl was going to keel over into the sodden,
sucking sand below.

“
What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.

“
He was right,” Arlen murmured in a whisper. “I don’t know how
he knew.”

“
Who knew?” Alice was growing panicky. “What is it?”

Arlen
turned to face her, her hand flying protectively to the sparkling
mark that rested against her throat.

“
I can’t understand how they all knew you were
coming.”

“
What is this place?” Alice asked suddenly, and her voice was
low.

“
A place very far away from anywhere else,” Arlen replied,
almost to herself. She was leaning her head against the cool block
of stone, its surface strangely smooth after many centuries of
torment by wind and water. “This is Alchemist’s Block,” she offered
then.

“
Our
alchemist?” Alice asked. She liked
the idea – it was all rather like being in a story.

“
Yes,” Arlen nodded, and frowned. “There’s something strange
about it all, some mystery about it. I heard some of the village
women talking once, when I was younger. I was in the sweet shop,
and they were having tea at one of the tables and gossiping, like
they do. They didn’t see me come in and, as everybody here shuts up
the instant I come into view, I ducked behind one of the counters
and listened.” She laughed suddenly, and the sound was strangely
hollow. “It sounds awful, doesn’t it? But there’s not much else to
do in a place like this.

“
They were talking about the sea – it had been very wild, but
that’s not unusual. They’re all afraid of it here –
we
are, I mean – it’s a
frightening sea – as if it has a mind of its own.” She paused, as
the endless rush of the water before them seemed to roar in
agreement. “They mentioned something about the rock – it wasn’t
long after I’d seen the picture, and I couldn’t help but listen.
But then Mrs Trulyn – she owns the shop – caught me lurking, and
hustled me outside before I could hear anything else.”

She
stopped, uncertain of how to continue. It was the first time she
had had somebody to talk to who was actually prepared to listen to
her about these things. Aunt Maud was no use, and somehow with Mr
MacKenzie, the subject had a strange habit of hiding itself beneath
distractions. She had really been left to puzzle everything out in
her own mind, and it was an odd luxury to finally be able to assess
the situation with a listener who seemed as eagerly interested as
she, and was as importantly involved. She couldn’t help but wonder
how strange everything must seem to someone who had been brought up
outside of Southmore, someone who was used to bright lights and
television and the cynicism of the city. The words tumbled over
anxiously in her mind, and she struggled to control them and select
the right ones.

“
But I heard enough before she threw me out,” she said, slowly.
“They blamed him. The alchemist. They said something about it not
having been this way before – about it being his fault, his
responsibility. Maybe that’s why they hate me so much,” she added,
as an afterthought. “Perhaps they see me – us – as being just as
guilty, because we’re his descendants.”

“
Whenabouts was all this?” Alice asked suddenly. Her head was
swimming. Arlen was right. Southmore and its odd goings-on
certainly seemed very far away from anywhere else, and particularly
far away from the lights and crowds and life of London.

“
I’m not sure,” Arlen frowned. “Somewhere in the fifteenth
century, I guess. At least, the clothes in the portrait looked
similar to some of the fifteenth century clothes in one of the
books in the library.” She stopped, and ran her hand lightly over
the smooth stone surface. “A long time ago.”

“
Yes,” Alice agreed. A thought struck her suddenly. “Do they
have any local history books in the library? That might tell you
something. Or the internet?”

“
Oh, there’s no village library,” Arlen said, with a surprised
glance. “Just our library at the castle. But there’s nothing about
Southmore or the alchemist there. I’ve read just about everything
in it.” She sighed, and looked puzzled. “What’s an
internet?”