Arcadia Read online

  Silvia wasn’t sure they should light a fire but Lino said the two people on horses rode away eastward and he’s sure there’s no one else nearby. “Look at this boy!” He hugged Rory theatrically. “Cold!” So they’ve made a pile at the back of the room, right on the floor. It’s getting quite dark and uncomfortably chilly. Lino digs around in one of the duffel bags and comes out with a battered black box. He hunches over the tent of twigs in the middle of the pile and is about to open the box—matches, maybe—when Per says, “Let me.”

  “Not now,” Silvia says.

  Per unfolds the staff from his lap and gets stiffly to his feet. “Yes,” he says. “They do it.”

  Lino shrugs and puts the box aside. Silvia sits up. She’s a shadow in the room, darker around the edges than the rest of them. “Per,” she says. “It’s nearly night. Leave them alone.” But Per’s ignoring her, for once. He stands with his legs apart, as if he’s on deck again, and thrusts the staff out towards the back of the room, shouting a strange angry word.

  “Too long already today,” Silvia says.

  Per’s only answer is to shout the word again. He jabs the staff into the gloom with a sharp motion, like he’s fighting someone invisible.

  A fleeting glimmer of uneasy light passes over the unlit fire, gone almost in the same instant it appears.

  Per growls with effort and frustration and then shouts a third time.

  “Mamma mia,” Lino whispers.

  This time there’s a kind of corkscrew of embers in the air, like the momentary trail of a spinning firework. It twists up with a weird sighing noise and vanishes.

  “Per,” Silvia warns.

  The big man swings the staff up and grips it in both hands above his head. He strikes it violently down against the floor, once, twice, a third time, shouting the same word each time, and each time louder and angrier until the final blow makes even Silvia flinch. Not a flicker of light disturbs the room. He roars with rage and hurls the staff into the corner, where it thunks against one of the decaying chairs before rolling noisily to a stop. It’s the first time Rory’s ever seen him let go of it. Per stands there, breathing heavily. No one dares say a word.

  Finally Lino picks up his box again and shuffles almost apologetically to the twigs. He unwraps some small smooth things from inside the box and starts striking them against each other, very rapidly, until sparks begin to trickle from his hands. It takes quite a long time for him to coax the sparks onto the dry leaves. While he’s nurturing a frail twist of smoke, cradling, puffing, muttering, Per strides slowly across the room and picks up his staff again. He sits down without looking at Silvia.

  She leans close to Rory.

  “Men,” she whispers, and winks at him.

  * * *

  They eat. Nothing’s been washed properly so it all tastes of grit and sand. Rory’s finally hungry, fiercely hungry as it turns out. There isn’t enough food but he knows better than to complain. As well as Libby’s bread there are other things from the Abbey cellars. It’s hard to imagine how, but Lino’s obviously stolen it. They’ll have realized, back in the Abbey. Kate and Fi will be furious.

  They’ll all be there right now, he thinks, sitting in the big room as darkness falls. It’ll be just like the evening Ol died, except now it’s him who’s dead. He’s the missing face. He wonders whether his mother’s sitting in the corner pale and wasted and not talking to anyone, like Molly was. He wonders whether someone’s saying he was a beacon of good humor in dark times. He wonders whether they’ll go over to the church on Briar one day to say good-bye to him.

  He chews slowly, out of habit, and sneaks glances at his new companions, Per with his squinty eyes and huge shaggy beard looking like a squatting bear, Lino grimacing and picking his teeth, Silvia as dark as fate. They’ve got things like unzipped sleeping bags to wrap over themselves while they sit. There wasn’t one for Rory but Lino found him a padded and hooded coat that’s not too big and surprisingly warm. No one talks much until Silvia wipes her hands on her trousers and says, “Now, let’s hear your story.”

  She means him. “What?”

  “You know a little bit of my story now, a little bit of Lino’s and Per’s. It’s your turn.”

  The others are all looking at him.

  “I don’t have a story,” he says.

  “Nobody,” Per says. “Just a boy.”

  “This is England,” Silvia says. Rory can’t tell who she’s talking to now. “This is where everything changed in the world. One day’s walk from here, two days, is the end of our journey.” She draws a wide circle in the air with her fingers. “The center. You think it’s an accident when all of us are here together? Nothing here is a mistake.” Per shrugs: he can’t follow so much English, he doesn’t understand and doesn’t care. “You,” she says, pointing at him: he blinks in the firelight. “You knew nothing, until Lino and me found you. Then the two of us became three.” She mimes the addition, unfolding fingers on her raised hand. “Now we are four. It’s the same road. All going together.”

  “With no Rory,” Lino says, “nothing.”

  “That’s right. Without him we would not be here.”

  Rory doesn’t want to feel a shiver of pride when she says this, but he can’t help it. In the silence that follows he stares at his hands. He doesn’t want anyone to see that he’s pleased.

  “Is it so close?” Per says in a thick whisper.

  Rory starts. It’s as if someone else has spoken. He’s never heard Per sound anything other than grumpy before, but suddenly there’s longing in his voice, or hunger.

  Silvia nods.

  “Where?”

  “East,” she says. “Not far. Not more than two days. One, I think.”

  “For sure?”

  She nods again.

  Lino, who’s been watching this exchange carefully, leaps up and starts dancing back and forth between her and Per and Rory, clapping all of them on the shoulder in turn, talking rapidly and with uncontrollable excitement, squatting down beside them and hugging them one after another. He ends up sticking close to Rory, evidently asking him something over and over again, turning aside only to implore Silvia to translate.

  “He says what will you do when we find the ring.” Lino’s obviously not satisfied with this translation, and corrects her emphatically, but she smiles as if determined to ignore him and says, “If you could do anything. If you could choose. Lino, he’s going to learn how to use his gift, and Per the same. What do you say? You won’t tell us your story but maybe you can tell us this instead.” Lino starts to berate her in Italian; she turns to him and with a quick shh cuts him off.

  They’re all looking at him again.

  “What d’you mean?” he says.

  “If you could wish for anything,” she says, “and it would be true. What would you wish for?”

  He stares between them. “So it’s like a wishing ring?”

  “Maybe like that,” Silvia says. Per’s about to grumble something but she silences him too.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Ring of biggest power,” Lino declaims.

  “Shh!”

  What does he want? Silvia’s waiting for him to say something. He thinks of extra chocolate and more TV time but it’s like someone else has put those wishes into his head, Ol maybe. Then he thinks of wishing that What Happened could unhappen and everything could go back to how it was in The Old Days. He’s heard the women wishing this all the time. Kate tells them not to but Missus Grouse especially goes on and on about it. A lot of them wish that the people they’ve lost weren’t dead. He tries wishing that too, but it still feels like someone else is choosing, not actually him. He thinks about things nobody else can wish for, things which belong only to him, like reading comics or talking to Her, but he can’t make them into one big wish. He knows he ought to wish he could go home. His mother, his bed. He can’t say that to Silvia, though, it would make him sound like a baby. And anyway—he doesn’t know
where he gets this thought from: it’s almost as if he’s plucked it out of Silvia’s face, her eyes glimmering as the fire takes hold—it wouldn’t even be true.

  * * *

  They’re going to take turns staying awake in case the people on horses come back. Rory doesn’t have to take a turn. Silvia tells him to sleep while she watches. Per and Lino lie down and go to sleep just like that. He can’t see how they’ve done it. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. He’s spread out a torn piece of carpet long enough and dry enough to curl up on but it’s doing nothing to protect him from the hard floor, plus it’s scratchy and smells of outside. He’s got no pajamas so he’s wearing the same clothes he had on all day, and the coat they found for him. They’re salty and stiff, and he’s cold anyway on the side that’s away from the fire. It’s noisy in the half-collapsed room too. The fire pops and hisses and there are things scuttling around in the brambles outside. Silvia goes out a couple of times and scrapes around for more things to burn.

  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.

  15

  The 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?”

  “Sc
outing.”

  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.”