she was shaking with the force of it. She had passed the Gate between worlds – the Gate that opened only for the dead – in a moment of selfless love, seeking one who was gone, and in that moment another had taken her, violated her, sending her back with his seed in her womb and his lie in her heart. It had been thirteen years before she could open the door even a crack and let a fragment of memory through – thirteen years of wondering and secret fear, searching in vain for Daniel in her son’s face and form. Now, whenever she dared to think about it, the anger leaped from a flicker to a flame, all but consuming her. Perhaps that was the real reason why she avoided telling Nathan – because she was afraid he might see it, and misunderstand, thinking it was directed at him. Or because her anger was a thing so deep, so private, that no one must know it was there – no one must see her damaged, betrayed, revengeful – until the moment came when she could let it out, and it would rage across the barriers of the worlds to find the one who had done this to her.
She wondered if other victims of supernatural impregnation had felt the same. Rosemary with her baby, Leda, ravaged by a swan (she had often wondered about the technicalities of that). And Mary, who had been honoured and overwhelmed, according to the Bible – but then, Annie reflected, the Bible was written by men. Maybe she too had known that instant of raw fury because her body had been used without her permission, invaded by a superior being who thought he was above the rules, and humans were his creatures, to do with as he pleased. Annie had been brought up a catholic, and, like anyone who lapses from a stern religion, God was real to her, both her Father and her Enemy. Her relationship with Him was Freudian, a matter of love and hate, and somehow the God of her childhood mingled with Nathan’s progenitor, and their betrayal was as old as Time. Gods demanded constant worship and sacrifice, but what did They do for mere mortals? As far as she could see all you got was forgiveness for the fate God Himself had dished out to you, and that only if you were lucky. She lost herself in imaginary conversations with Mary, and in the end found she was trying to pray for the virgin mother with her lost innocence, because the reflex of prayer is strong in the human spirit. But she didn’t know Whom she could pray to, because with God beyond the pale, there was Nobody left.
The next day, when Nathan telephoned from school, she asked him: ‘Are you dreaming again? About – another world?’
‘A bit,’ he conceded after a pause.
‘Take care,’ she said, ‘won’t you?’
‘Yes, Mum. There’s no danger, honestly.’ Except the Urdemons …
But Annie knew without being told that there was always danger, and it wasn’t in Nathan’s nature to take care.
THREE An Entanglement of Clues
At Crowford Comprehensive, Hazel saw Jonas Tyler and Ellen Carver talking in the corridor after English, and her heart quailed.
‘Don’t know what she sees in him,’ another girl said, but Hazel knew, and gloried in the knowing, because seeing something in him was her secret, and even Ellen Carver would never see what she saw. The hidden sorrow that he bore, the mystery behind his infrequent smile and the blue of his eyes. (He smiled more often when he was talking to Ellen, but Hazel told herself that was forced.)
Back at home she looked again at Effie’s notebook, and the hand-labelled bottles, but still she hesitated. There was a poem she vaguely remembered from an anthology she had read with Nathan when she was a child, the usual sort of nursery doggerel, but the underlying horror in it had made a strong impression on her. In it there was a woman or girl, sitting alone and lonely, wishing – and a body came in to join her, piece by piece, starting with the feet and working up. But at the climax of each verse ‘still she sat, and still she sighed, and still she wished for company’. When all the body was there, something unpleasant happened to the girl, Hazel couldn’t recall exactly what, except that it was nasty. Perhaps she got eaten. Anyway, she couldn’t help feeling she was in a similar position. Still she sat, and still she sighed, and still she wished for company … Fairytales, cleaned up for Victorian consumption, might tell you that if you rubbed a lamp you would get a genie who would obey your every command, but Hazel knew better. Wish-fulfilment always had its price, and the price was always more than you wanted to pay.
She didn’t trust magic, even if it worked (especially if it worked). She didn’t trust Lilliat, with her silver-blue eyes and the unnatural breeze in her hair. Lilliat had called her price trivial, but in her heart Hazel knew what was being asked of her, and it was too much. Even for the infrequent smiles of Jonas Tyler. Besides, what was the point of attracting him by magic? One day the magic would fade, and there would be no reality underneath. Or so she told herself, struggling for rationality. (But one day was in the future, and for a teenager the future was too remote to touch the urgency of present desire.)
Still she sat, and still she sighed …
She wished for Nathan, to take her mind off things, but Nathan wasn’t there.
The evenings were growing longer now, and she went for a walk in the woods by way of distraction, because there was no witch paraphernalia out there to tempt her. When she was much younger and her father was still at home she used to run to the woods to be alone, sometimes climbing a tree and staying up there for hours, wrapped in the quiet and the privacy of her leaf-bound world. Now she was older and her father had gone she preferred her bedroom, but that day the lure of the woods drew her back. She found her favourite tree and scrambled up into the branches, just to prove she still could. And then somehow it was easy to lapse into her former quiescence, back against the tree-trunk, legs crooked, pulling the hush of leaf-murmur and wind-murmur around her like a cloak. She felt her self merging with the self of the tree, becoming bark and root, sap and acorn, reaching deep, deep into the darkness of the earth, listening to the sound of growing, and burrowing, and the tingle of new life uncurling and groping towards the light. And then she was stretching up to the sky, straining with twig-tip and leaf-tip to reach the sun. She didn’t know that this oneness with things was a part of the power she feared to indulge; all she knew was that it made her feel peaceful, and somehow complete. The tiny denizens of the tree-tops came close to her, untroubled by her presence; a squirrel scurried over her thigh.
Presently, she saw the woodwose.
She had met him once or twice before, but only with Nathan, who had been his friend from infancy. She knew he was very shy. He was a stick-thin creature only a few feet high, with a pointy face all nose and the sideways eyes of an animal. His voice was as soft as a rustle in the leafmould; his movements altogether noiseless. She didn’t hear him approach; rather, she became aware of him, one twig-pattern among many, perched on a nearby bough, watching her. Perhaps he had been there all the time.
It was a long while before he spoke.
‘Tell Nathan …’
‘Yes?’
‘He’s here. Hiding in woods, skulking behind bushes. Spying on the house where the wise man lives. He kills rabbits with slingstones and eats them. I don’t know what he wants, but he won’t go away.’
‘Who?’ Hazel asked, quiet as a breath.
‘Him. The hairy one from down in the valley, where the old old house used to be. You let him out, you and Nathan. He stole the thing, and ran away, but he didn’t go far. He sleeps in a fox’s hole, down in the Darkwood. I think he strangled the fox. Tell Nathan.’
The dwarf, Hazel thought, remembering the curious little man she and Nathan had inadvertently released from his underground prison
