Arcadia (28 page)

It feels like half the night must have gone past and he's never going to get to sleep, when she looks at him and sees that his eyes are open.

“The first night is difficult always,” she says, lowering her voice only a little. “The second, a bit better. The third better again. Always better, until it's OK.”

He props himself up on an elbow.

“You never said what you were going to do.”

“Hmm?”

He's been thinking as he lies awake, round and round. “When you were talking about when you find the ring. You said what Lino and Per want, and you asked me, but you didn't say what you want.”

She's sitting with her knees drawn up. She leans her cheek on them, looking back at him thoughtfully.

“You didn't, also,” she says.

“I dunno. Can't think of anything.”

“And you still can't?”

“What about you?”

He's pretty sure he's got Per and Lino sorted out. He's been thinking about them and their quest and what Silvia said, that both of them want to learn to use their gift. That means Per wants to be able to control his magic staff all the time, because it's obvious he can't, and Lino wants to be able to turn himself into an owl at will, because it's obvious he can't do that either. It's that thing all the superheroes have where they need to learn to Use Their Power Wisely.

But he can't figure Silvia out. There's something different about her, something (he's decided this is by far the best word for her)
secret
.

She takes her time answering him.

“You ask me what I would do if I could wish for anything?”

He's not sure that's exactly what he's asking—what he really wants to know is what she's going to do when they find the Ring of Power, which feels like a slightly different question—but if she wants to talk about herself that's OK.

She closes her eyes. “You remember I told you about the morning when I wake up and I'm all alone in a strange country? I would find the person I lost that day. That's what I wish for.”

“Who was he?”

Her eyes blink open and she smiles briefly. “Not he. She. It's the person who taught me English. I told you, remember? She took me away from the camp, away from the men who beat me, the women who pretend to be my grandmother or my aunt.”

“What happened to her?”

She lifts her head up so she can shake it, slowly. “I don't know,” she says, staring into the fire.

He's rolled over again and tried closing his eyes when she surprises him by speaking up again.

“Do you know this word,
Arcadia
?”

He twists around to check that she's talking to him. “What?”

She says it slowly. “Arcadia.”

It sounds like a computer game. He doubts she's thinking about computer games.

“It means,” she says, “good place, happy place. Where things are easy. Peaceful. Arcadia. But also, it's a real place. The name of a place in . . . Hellas. What do you call this country in English? Not Hellas. Greeks. Greece! You've never been to Arcadia?”

“Me? No.”

She turns back to the fire, remembering. “Steep hills. Little trees, little dry leaves. Everything dusty. That's where we were.”

“Who?” he says, after a while.

She shakes away some secret thought. “Me and the person I loved, the teacher. That's where we lost each other. In Arcadia.”

He can't tell whether she's talking to him or not. It sounds like she's just remembering, but then she keeps glancing at him as if it matters that he's there.

“I thought it was the end, when that happened,” she says. “Like my life was over, I'm finished. Although I was only nine, ten, little like you, I thought I would die from being so unhappy. But it was the beginning.”

“Oh,” he says, after another long pause.

“There is a light,” she says. “Too bright to look at. Like the sun. That's how I see the road ahead of me, because of this light.” Just when Rory thinks he must actually be dreaming, despite the ache he can feel in his back from trying to sleep on the floor, she turns to him again and he knows this is really happening. “I saw it first that day, in that place. Arcadia. I know then that everything I see is the truth. I know that all the time I'm going towards it, that at the end of my road I will see what makes this light. Just like I find you again. And her too. I know this will happen.”

He wishes he knew what she wants him to say. He feels like she's handing him her secret, but when he opens it up there's just another secret inside it.

“And it will happen here,” she says, leaning towards him. She's whispering now.

He doesn't doubt for a moment that she really can see the future. Her face is full of it, shadows and ghosts.

“Very soon,” she says.

  *  *  *  

The night goes on inching by. He supposes he must have got to sleep eventually because he has a very peculiar dream.

He dreams that Per's sitting up by the fire in the middle of the night, his staff crosswise across his lap as usual. The fire's burned right down. Its last light has got into Per's face, as though he's sweating, or his skin's been silvered over like a mirror: everything's dark but he's shining dully. It's so strange seeing him like that, bolt upright, glowing, that Rory lifts his head to stare at him. That's when Per starts speaking not in his own voice (
oh,
Rory thinks,
it's a dream
).

“It belongs to me,” he says. The voice coming from his mouth is a man's. It talks in normal proper English. “She gave it to me freely. I did no wrong.” It all feels very clear and logical even though it's nonsense, as so often in dreams. “Knowledge is all I sought. What use is wisdom if it dies with you?” (Rory doesn't have to answer. It's the kind of dream where you're just watching.) “It ought to be mine. I have the right of it. I conversed with angels and beings under the earth. For my wisdom she chose me, me and no other. It was fated. Give it back to me.” The voice is hungry. There's now something terrible about it, dark and urgent and yet horribly patient, as if it's got all the time in the world. “Put it in my hand. It is mine.” An ember flares, and the light in Per's face burns harder for a moment. In the dream Rory can't see whether the man's eyes are open or closed. They're like embers themselves. “Mine,” the voice repeats in a cruel whisper. Then the fire goes out.

T
he next thing he knows it's daylight. He aches all over and his mouth feels like he's been chewing dust. There's a mad riot of birdsong.

Silvia and Per are moving about, rearranging things in sacks. The damp light suggests it's early, painfully early for someone who's hardly slept. His hands and feet are almost numb.

“There you are,” Silvia says. Per stops what he's doing and makes a disappointed grunt. Perhaps he's been hoping they were going to leave Rory behind.

Rory sits up, rubbing his neck. “Where's Lino?”

“Scouting.”

Per loads himself up like a donkey. Silvia's got a little backpack but otherwise the big man carries everything. He slings sacks and bags over each end of his staff and then hefts the whole lot across his shoulders. No one questions this arrangement, even though Rory's not carrying anything at all. They leave the bungalow without a second glance and tramp through the detritus of the town until they come to a road rising away from it, inland. It's more like a canyon in the green morass than an actual road, but it's hard underfoot, and when Rory scuffs away a clump of rotting leaves he sees something which prompts another unlikely memory: a straight white line painted on the ground. He's suddenly remembering how all the roads on the Mainland had things painted on them, arrows and words and numbers, and his father explained:
It's so everyone doesn't crash into each other
. Everyone. There were lots of people. Just walking from where the helicopter landed to the place they got in the car, he saw more people than the entire population of Home. That's what he remembers, masses of people, driving and walking around. He thinks he does, anyway, but he can't have. There's no one here.

Lino appears, coming down the road ahead of them. “Everywhere quiet,” he says, and then gives Silvia a longer report in Italian. They keep walking while he talks. It's steadily and quite steeply uphill. Per trudges rhythmically, he doesn't want to stop or slow down, not with the load he's carrying. Rory hangs back with the other two. Even though he can't understand a word of their conversation it's better than risking a look from Per.

“He says very few houses,” she tells him, when Lino's finished. It's funny how much slower the words sound. Italian's like running compared to English walking. “He doesn't see anybody. But he sees the mark of horses, with the feet.”

“Hoofprints,” Rory says.

“
Ecco
.” Rory's learned this word by now. It means one of
Look, There, OK,
or
I told you so,
or a combination of them. Lino's stopped. He points down by his feet. Rory would never have seen the mark on his own but now he's looking carefully there it is: a thick quarter-circle stamped into a patch of receptive mud. It's obviously part of a hoofprint.

Frowning, Silvia stops as well. Per glances back as best he can with the staff straddling his shoulders, but keeps on uphill.

“So they were watching,” she says. “This is not old.”

“I see no one.” Lino explains himself to Rory in a noisy whisper. “This I don't like. I see them, they don't see me, that's OK. This,
psshh
. Not so good.”

“Is it those people we saw?”

“I think so.” Silvia's tapping her foot, thinking. “We think they go away but they must not go far. They come back, quietly, watching.”

“Horse is big
animale
.” Lino trots with his hands and makes clopping sounds. “But I don't hear.”

“They're careful, these people. Clever.” Silvia leans close to Rory and grins. “Women.”

Per shouts something which obviously means
Keep up,
though it's more snorts than words. The three others start following him again.

“Can we go a different way?” Rory says.

“Not us,” Silvia says. “Lino says this is the only road. There are small roads, foot roads or horse, by the sea. But we can't go that way. You and me, yes. Them, no.”

“
Le sirene,
” Lino explains, seeing Rory's expression.

It sounds even better when Lino says it. He likes this word, sea-rainy. It's much better than calling Them
Them
. It's glistening and misty, like Her skin.

Does She have a proper name too? He's never thought of it before.

“I thought it was OK with Per.”

Silvia lowers her voice. “Sometimes, yes. Sometimes Per can keep the
sirene
away. But it's not good to trust those spirits too much.” Rory's about to ask what she means when she goes on. “Anyway, look, the staff is busy.” She grins, gesturing at Per's back. “Like a . . . What is it, male cow?”

“Ox?”

“That's right.” She mimes walking under a yoke. “Like an ox, yes?”

Lino nudges Rory. “You know
le sirene
?”

“Er. Yes.”

“You see?”

“You mean did I ever see Them?”

“
Si si.
Girls without clothings.” He winks. “
Molta bella
. Very nice.”

“No,” Rory says, looking away. He's being teased.

“
Ma no
. For you is OK! Only a boy. You don't want to see this?”

“'Course not,” he mutters.

Lino sighs. “After we find this ring, I take a
sirena
, I think.
Come sposa
. My woman, you know? I think this will be . . .” He smacks his fingers to his lips. “The most beautiful. You help, yes? You go them, you say, This Uccellino is good man, very good man. OK?”

Rory's saved from having to respond by the fact that Per's stopped in front of them. They've reached the top of the slope above the abandoned town. For the first time the road ahead dips instead of rising. The choking green mass they've been walking between has flattened down here, exposed to the sea wind, and all of a sudden there's a view inland. Disoriented, Rory looks around. He can't see the sea anywhere. It's gone.

The wind sounds different: narrower, farther away. Instead of the sea the horizons are all green and brown, with glints of yellow. There are distant trees whose leaves have gone the color of weak afternoon sunshine. There are open acres like fields, but twenty times the size of the fields on Home. The wind blows patterns like waves across their tall weeds and grass. A single heathy hill rises out of them, like one of Sansen's humps except the sea around it is green instead of grey. He has a picture of the Mainland in his head which shows a great mass of houses and shops and things going off in every direction, like a carpet of buildings unrolled over the ground. There's nothing like that in sight. He can see a few houses or barns but they're peeping out of the landscape, not the other way around. They're scattered in groups, little rocks in the grass ocean. Smoke's coming up from one of them. The black shapes moving slowly through the green around them aren't seals or birds but cows, real cows, like the ones there used to be on Home before they all died or were killed. There's so much solid ground everywhere it makes Rory feel slightly short of breath. So much of it, and so little of anything else. Birds drift around in ones and twos. There are no people, no women working or pausing in their work to chat. There's just a wide world lying utterly new in every direction, like a giant asleep.

Per sniffs. “Looks OK,” he says. He shifts the staff with its dangling cargo and sets off again.