Lily (42 page)

An hour later she was lost. She had come here from Bovey Tracy, which was east, but beyond that she knew nothing of the way. There was no track, no path, and the day was dreary, the watery sun obscure behind a gaunt line of clouds. How had Meraud found the way? And there was no one to ask, no living creature anywhere. She veered suddenly at the sight of a badger, dead in a patch of stitchwort she’d almost walked on. Her pack was heavy, she’d brought too much; her back ached already. Gabriel walked behind her, not leading the way at all. When she would turn around to look at him, he would stop dead and stare back, hopefully, as if to see if she’d come to her senses yet.

After another hour it started to rain. The sun was completely hidden now and she could not tell east from west. Mist flowed in the gullies, white as a stream of milk, rising and thickening as she walked. The ground became soggy and treacherous; her unease turned to fear. She realized she was walking uphill, but she couldn’t tell toward what. All at once a rocky outcrop appeared, whiter than the white mist, jutting up from the rough moorland scrub like a skull. The rock had a crack, large enough to squeeze into and take refuge from the wind.

But not from the rain, and in minutes she was drenched. The fog closed in. Waiting for it to clear was frustrating, maddening, and finally unbearable. She stepped out into the white world and began a slow, careful descent.

“Which way, Gabriel?” she asked hopelessly when her footsteps leveled off. The mist had lifted a little. In front of her the moor looked greener, slightly smoother. She hefted her pack and set off in that direction.

A mistake. The squishy turf ought to have warned her, but she knew nothing of bogs. One second she walked on solid ground, the next she stood thigh-deep in frigid water, her feet encased in mud that wouldn’t release her. She shouted out, clutching her bag to her chest. Behind her, Gabriel barked excitedly. The bog stretched out as far as she could see, pea-green, steaming like a pudding. The longer she stood still, the deeper she sank. She got out at last by leaning backwards and pulling her legs out slowly, one at a time, straining against the oozing suction that wanted to hold her.

She found a stick and used it to prod and poke at the ground, but deception was everywhere and the mist was her cleverest enemy. Unable to see, she went into the bog again and again, a dozen times, until she was weeping with despair and helpless terror. She found a patch of firm ground and sat down, perhaps to die, for the marsh was all around her now. The secret was never to descend, when the mist lifted enough to see, toward the smooth, safe-looking pasture lying low, for that was where treachery lay. But the mist rose and fell purely to trick her, over and over, and she knew it would win in the end. She put her head on her knees and sobbed.

A damp snuffling on her neck warmed, then chilled her. She lifted her head. Gabriel sat beside her, watching her with his impassive, infernal patient look. “Why aren’t you helping me?” Lily whimpered. “Meraud said you wouldn’t let me get lost. Oh, Gabe.” She put her hand on his thick neck and bent her face to his, needing another creature to weep with. But he jerked away and backed up a step. She stared resentfully into his unfathomable eyes. “What? Will you lead me to safety? I don’t believe you.” He waited, tail out straight, face tolerant-looking. She muttered an obscenity, an actual obscenity, and got to her feet. “Lead on, then, you …” She trailed off, ashamed.

Gabriel led her out of the bog. She didn’t believe it until she’d walked for more than a mile on nothing deadlier than squelchy moss. But where were they going? The fog had lifted all at once, as if the whole planet had risen above the clouds. But now hailstones hissed in the bracken and the biting wind chilled to the bone. They passed a pool, slate-gray in the flying sleet, ominous and drear. She saw the bones of a dead lamb, and ringlets of wool scattered around it by the crows; farther on a sheep’s skull leered at her from the peat. Gabriel trotted ahead, head down and purposeful, occasionally stopping to wait for her. Rubble from the granite tors around them made the going rough. She stumbled for the third time, landing heavily on hands and knees, and this time she didn’t get up.

Gabriel ambled back to wait. She blew on her scratched and bleeding palms and hugged her stomach, rocking herself. Her clothes were wet through; she was freezing. “Where are we going?” Her voice sounded pitiful even to her. Gabriel gazed off into space. She still had her bag of food, though most of it was ruined from bog water. “Are you hungry?” She opened the bag and spread the contents out, offering them. Gabriel looked down, then away. “I’m not either,” she admitted on a sigh. Nearby a stunted tree, dripping melancholy, looked grotesque against the winter sky. Afternoon darkness was setting in. Stiff-legged, she rose to her feet. Leaving her pack of food where it lay, she followed Gabriel into the deepening dusk.

Later, she would never know how much later, she saw something in the distance that might be a cottage. Her legs felt like lead and her body ached from exhaustion, but she quickened her pace. A little farther on she slowed, and finally stopped. And started to laugh. The demented sound of it scared her, but she couldn’t stop. Gabriel looked back and grinned at her. They were standing in front of Meraud’s cottage.

It was while she was lighting a fire in the hearth that the idea came to her. Shivering uncontrollably, she knelt for a moment, frozen fingers almost touching the flames, steam starting to rise from her sodden skirts, and considered her choices. It seemed to Lily that they had narrowed to two: die now, or die later. Because she was a coward, she chose the first.

She had thought the peat was running low; the task of bringing it all in, load after load, changed her perspective slightly. But at last it was done: the enormous pile hulked on the fireplace hearth, dark and pungent and ready. Her plan was to burn every bit of it in one last, long, bone-warming fire, and when it was all gone, tomorrow or perhaps the next day, just to close her eyes and let everything go.

She pulled Meraud’s chair closer to the flames and stirred them higher with her stick. She boiled a cup of tea. Gabriel plopped down beside her with a loud groan and put his head on his paws. She scratched his ears absently; with her other hand she rubbed her stomach. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said out loud. “I thought we could be safe. At least we’ll all be together and Meraud won’t be alone. It’s not your fault, Gabriel, it’s mine. I forgive you for bringing me back. I should’ve known you’d do it and not gone with you. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter anyway.” But it did, because she had wanted her baby to live. She put her head back and let the tears fall down her face, blurring the fire.

She woke up from a sound sleep because she was perspiring. No wonder, she though; I have on so many clothes. She took some off, then added more peat to the fire. She heated up a pot of barley gruel and ate it standing up. When she was full, she set the pan on the floor for Gabriel. She made another cup of tea and sat back down.

At midnight she woke up again, flushed from the heat. She went to the door and opened it. Wind rushed in, cool and fresh; it felt wonderful. The stars shimmered in a black, moonless sky. Gabriel trotted past her, panting. Meraud’s sculptures looked like immobile ghosts in the dark. She shut the door reluctantly and went to rebuild the fire, adding as much turf as the grate could hold. The pile of peat was burning faster than she’d expected—nearly half gone already. Good. With luck, she would use it all up by morning. Tired of the chair, she lay down on the rush mat, as far from the blazing hearth as she could get, and watched the play of firelight on the wall of mirrors across the way until her eyes glazed.

She dreamt she was burning. The flames were famished; they devoured her body in seconds, stripping away layers of flesh while she grew smaller, smaller, until there was nothing left of her except her baby. He was a tiny, naked thing, sitting up in the thin air where her belly had been, impervious to the fire. He had Devon’s face. And she was gone, she had ceased to be. How odd, then, that she could hear Meraud’s voice so clearly.
Wake up, Lily,
it said in her ear, quavery and insistent.
Wake up.
She opened her eyes.

The cottage was on fire. The mantel was gone; the stone chimney was invisible behind a wall of flame. While she watched, fire leapt in a hissing yellow arc to the diminished stack of peat on the hearth. It caught instantly. In the time it took her to scramble to her knees, it turned into a roaring, funneling inferno. There was no more air; with the last breath in her lungs, Lily screamed. But no—the dazzling glass wall was a
mirror
of the conflagration, not the fire itself, and she was not surrounded. She got to her feet and staggered toward the door. Fiery chunks of thatch rained down, scorching her hair, her clothes. She found the door. But with her hand on the hot rope handle, she dropped to her knees. The earth floor felt warm on her forehead; she gasped a chestful of smoky air and thought of burning to death. A natural cremation. Why not? But Gabriel was barking outside, and she couldn’t breathe. She yanked on the handle and crawled into the cold, sweet night on her hands and knees.

Air rushing through the open door stoked the flames higher, transforming the cottage into a furnace. The heat drove her back. Gabriel planted his feet and howled at the spitting, raging blaze. The noise deafened her. She put her hands to her ears and screamed back, at one with the chaos and the primitive synergy of fire and air and stone and earth. She could hear nothing but the bestial roaring of the flames, but she turned around, facing the blackness and the cold. Something prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. She saw a shape moving toward her in the murk. Death, she assumed. She braced herself, protecting her womb. She shrieked in mindless panic when she saw that it was not death but a man. Blood thundered in her brain, blinding her. She was fainting, the tide of blood rising too fast, too high. The figure closed in. Devon—it was Devon. She pitched forward and he caught her in his arms.

S
HE WAS DRESSED IN
rags, layers and layers of them, all reeking of peat. He laid her on the ground a safe distance from the fiery cottage while he shot a wary glance at the stiff-legged monster standing motionless six feet away. He said something low and calming, but the dog only stalked closer, eerily alert. “It’s all right, I’m a friend. I’m Lily’s friend.”

A lie, he thought. A cowardly, contemptible lie. Nevertheless, the sound of her name had an instantaneous effect: the dog sat back on its haunches and grinned at him.

Lily’s face, ruddy in the livid glow of the fire, was thinner, he saw, the edges sharper. Was she ill? He thought she’d only fainted, but now her stillness frightened him. He began to loosen her tattered clothes, still warm from the fire. And then he froze. Not breathing, hand hovering, he stared down at the soft mound of her belly under the last layer of rust-colored homespun. His mind collided with the possibility, staggered backward, confronted it again. He touched her. His fingers were stiff with tension; at first he felt nothing, no sensation at all. Then, slowly, his rigid hand relaxed. The truth seeped into him as gently as his stroking palm rubbed across her abdomen.

He closed his eyes and felt a fullness in his heart rising, expanding, so poignant and powerful he wanted to weep. “Lily,” he said, and she awoke. Her eyes were cloudy, her face uncomprehending. He whispered, “I’ve found you. Lily, I had stopped hoping.”

Something gathered behind her eyes. He waited for recognition—prayed for welcome; the possibility of redemption lit all the black corners of his soul. Then she opened her arms, and they embraced.

Her hair was wild, a mad-looking halo against the flames that still curled and hissed behind her. He buried his face in it and held her tighter, trembling. The salt on his lips was the taste of his own tears. “Darling,” he murmured, rocking her. “Thank God, thank God.” He wanted to see her face, but he couldn’t let go yet. “I looked for you everywhere. Everywhere. If I hadn’t seen the fire, I would never have found you. Lily, thank God.”

Finally he pulled away. “I went to Soames’s house first,” he told her, the words tumbling out. “He wouldn’t speak to me. But his wife caught up to me as I was leaving, and she said she’d seen you walk west, away from the town.” He remembered the way she’d scuttled up to him in the street like a crab, hanging onto his sleeve and hissing in a frightened whisper—
“They threw her clothes in the street!”
—and he shuddered, as he had then, unable to speak of it.

“I searched for weeks but I couldn’t find you, Lily. Then, a few days ago—I can’t remember how many—a little boy in Bovey Tracy told me he’d seen a lady with red hair. Last fall, he said. She went away with the witch who lives on the moor, whose dog is really a demon.”

Lily didn’t speak, and he couldn’t read her expression in the dimness. “Are you all right, darling? Are you well? The child—”

She pushed his hand away when he stretched it out toward her, and got to her feet with clumsy haste. He scrambled up, helping her. “Careful, love, you’re not—”

“Is Clay dead?”

Her voice startled him; he’d never heard that thin, emotionless tone. “No, no,” he said hurriedly, “he’s all right. He’s still weak, not himself, but the doctors say he’s going to get well.” She looked away, toward the fire. He searched her sharp profile uneasily. She seemed so strange. “Who lived here with you, Lily? Were you alone?” He glanced at the outlandish maze of frozen statues all around them, glimmering weirdly by the light of the fire. Her dog stood beside her like a sentinel, watchful and impassive, waiting. Sparks floated in lazy spirals, flickering out before they touched the icy ground. “Lily, are you all right?” He took a step toward her; she moved back in tandem.

“I’m cold,” she whispered, hugging herself.

Immediately he shrugged out of his heavy black cloak and draped it over her shoulders. “We’ll go home tomorrow,” he murmured, his cheek touching hers. She shuddered—from the cold, he thought.