“In time, sir. In time. We have one last letter to deliver. Would you care to come along?”
“Something tells me that I might,” said Hewell, and he looked on in fascination as Toby opened his courier pouch and drew out the blank envelope he had secreted there that morning. It had traveled with them all day, neither of them remarking on it, but a haunting presence nonetheless. The envelope was unsealed, and Toby bowed the sides that he might reach in and retrieve a piece of folded paper. Opening this revealed a blank sheet and one loose postage stamp. It was the same Hewell had seen on the letters delivered to Pellapon Hall the prior day: violet and blotched, both regal and malignant.
“I have for you, sir, the penny stamp of our Kingdom. We call it the Ghost Penny.”
“I assume it will cost me a penny, then?”
“As you say, Mr. Hewell, and well worth it.”
Hewell handed over his solitary copper, glad that he always kept one on hand in the event of just such an emergency—one never knew when a letter might need mailing, and not even an officer of the Royal Mail could post correspondence without a stamp.
Toby accepted the coin and cupped it in his hands. He pursed his lips and puffed away the crumbs of bread and cheese from the tabletop where they had dined, then opened his hands and released not only the penny but a pair of dice. And not typical dice. One was cubic, but its pips were replaced with asymmetrical scratches, perhaps hieroglyphs. The other had more faces than Hewell could count without losing track and was marked with Greek letters. Toby examined them both closely, then took a small hand-bound volume from his breast pocket and opened it to a page on which grids were filled with marks corresponding to those on the dice.
“Very well,” Toby said to himself. He then handed the blank paper and envelope to Hewell with odd, stiff formality. “Seal this up as if you’ve written a letter to be mailed, then stamp the envelope.”
Puzzled but amused, Hewell folded the sheet several times and slipped it into the fibrous envelope. He then took up the Ghost Penny and regarded the pale visage upon it, with its single blurred red eye. The backside was sticky with a wash of gum arabic and the purple stain had bled into it.
“I require something with which to dab the stamp,” Hewell said.
“It is traditional to place the Ghost Penny on your tongue and rest it there a few moments,” Toby said. “That will be moisture enough. Like the Penny Black, it is self-adhesive.”
Hewell licked the violet stamp, surprised to discover that it tasted of those very flowers, with a sugary sweetness that barely masked an underlying bitterness. His fingers, as they smoothed the stamp in place, were all atremble.
“And now, by the ruling of the Concordance, I am to show you this.”
Toby spread out a district map. At first it appeared identical to the one Hewell carried, all its features familiar from the day’s wanderings. However, the place-names and designations were markedly different. The main street was labeled as The Row of Silent Ones. There were a Ghastly Bypass and Staring Knolls; also Tiny Gnashers—a bridge above the Ghoulfast Cataract—which he had seen himself that day and crossed repeatedly on that selfsame bridge, although he could easily have waded the so-called cataract (in truth a very small weir) without wetting his knees. Toby ran a finger along a dotted, circuitous path marked as the Ghost Road, which touched each location on the map. “This is the route I take when performing my secret post, sir. We will follow it tonight, to reach the Specter’s Seat.”
At the bottom of the map, Hewell finally spied a legend, neatly calligraphed: Spectralia.
Deakins was right, he realized. This was a game. And although he had never been fond of time-trivializing amusements, he found himself caring very much about the outcome—thrilled to be engaged in it.
Seeing the district annotated with unfamiliar designations, he wondered what world he had been led through all that day. This one had slumbered unseen within it—unseen by him, that is, for it occurred to him that Toby saw them both.
And the others—Binderwood’s bewildering populace—how many of them took part in this game? Last night, stalking Toby through the fields and finally to the Cotter’s hut, he had seen men, women, children—the aged and the spry—all attending to the strange cowled figure in the wheeled chair. A soft yet rough voice—feminine and ageless—few of her words had reached him. But for her audience they appeared to hold great power.
Tonight he supposed he would hear them for himself.
“You must address your letter, sir.”
“Oh, yes. To whom?”
“To yourself.”
Hewell blinked, dipped a pen, and did as he was told while Toby watched closely. He tried to pass the letter to the boy but was refused. “This one is yours to deliver.”
They set off without further delay. The Ghost Road ran parallel to the public road in many places, even crossing it on occasion. They went in silence. Hewell soon found that they did not walk it alone. From certain houses as they passed, costumed figures emerged and fell in behind them. Horns and scales, masks of textiles, claws purloined from taxidermied creatures. None spoke. The cortege added to a growing sense of immanence; the night was gravid with revelation. Obscure emotions bloomed. Inner silences, thoughts forever unvoiced, threatened to make a thunderous clap that would deafen them all. It occurred to him he ought to have felt terror. Instead he felt wild joy.
As the woods closed in, scenes of greater weirdness greeted them. Half-lit tableaux, scattered scenes of figures caught in ritual or combat or some confluence of the twain. Two haphazardly armored knights faced each other, swords and shields held high, one shouting, “I cast Bolt of Oblivion upon thee!” To which the other countered, “My Looking-Glass Greatshield repels the attack, which returns to thee in triple force!” Then a supervisory figure in a starry cloak, after shaking dice in a leather cup, intoned, “Thou’rt both struck down in the same instant!” But as the third figure spoke and the first two staggered, they noticed the passing procession. They arrested their falls, gathered their weapons, and joined the silent marchers. The wizardly one gave Hewell a nod and a wink. He recognized the innkeeper Floss beneath the overshadowing hood, although Mrs. Floss was evidently not a participant in these matters.
Pellapon Hall loomed ahead of them, and within the great house loomed a greater one, spectral and mysterious like the grinning face that hides within the moon. Turning aside, they crossed the dewy fields and descended into a crevice in the cliffs above the sea. The waves cast luminous foam, futile yet persistent, onto rocks far below. The populace of Spectralia filed in behind Hewell and Toby. A bonfire burned in the lee of the cleft, barely troubled by wind. On the far side of the fire, back in a natural hollow upon a shelf of stone, he saw the cowled figure of the previous night. Her wheeled chair was off to one side, empty, for she had been set upon the ancient seat. Within the hood, her visage was dim; yet it took no effort for Hewell’s mind to fill that void with the likeness engraved on the Ghost Penny stamp.
He studied the letter he carried, comparing the face on the stamp with the one before him. The etched engraving, with its fine crosshatches and delicate dark borders, appeared to reach beyond the boundary of the stamp, creeping over his fingers, his sleeves, flickering out through the night. He looked up and saw the entire world becoming an engraving, redrawn continually by some fluid invisible hand that gave it animation, keeping it in constant, shimmering flux. The colors of objects barely stayed within the lines that sought to contain them, as if the inks with which the world was painted were trembling, blurring, running free. Hewell’s flesh swarmed with tiny etched lozenges and diamond-shaped pores, his skin but a net of finest mesh that barely held his soul. He was surrounded by figures out of a Goya aquatint, the night a subtle intaglio printed by some mysterious process. If the fire were but artifice, then how did it emit both heat and light? An inner flame drove everything, even the dark-edged rocks, even the painted night. The sky itself was out of register, with stars no more than offset dots of purple, pink, and blazing red, just like her eyes. Her eyes…