He put the money in his pocket and sat back, looking down on the flat, waterlogged river meadows that stretched out below him, their flooded paths iced to shining deathtraps where kids slid and screeched, tiny voices rising to him.
He would not go to Otter’s Brook.
He shivered, the cold wind cutting him. He had sworn he would find the Grail and he would find it. The osprey was here. The castle must be close. He got up and wandered along the path, thinking hard. He’d have to watch every penny. Eat carefully. Chips. Anything cheap. And sleep out. In January! The thought of that was appalling but he made himself face it. That was where he was going wrong. To find Corbenic he would have to give up everything, to walk right out of the world of towns and bed-and-breakfasts. To do what he had sometimes dreamed of sleepily on long train journeys, to walk into the greenwood and not come back.
Wherever it was it was near, and far. Like Bron had been. Like his mother had been.
The park curled around a castle. He stared up at the gray walls in dull, wry appreciation, not even surprised anymore. This whole borderland was a line of castles; they were passing him from one to the next, but none of them was the right one.
He took a buttered roll from his bag and ate it; it was hard and crusty, left over from breakfast, but it was all he was allowing himself for now.
Under it, still wrapped in its box and tissue paper, was the pale gray tie. Cal brought it out and opened it on his knee. The tie was beautiful. Its silk shone. It smelled of Thérèse’s expensive perfume. It was all the things he had ever desired, all the comfort and elegance and taste. For a long moment he let himself enjoy it, remembering the pleasure of buying it. Then he folded it up, his hands shaking with cold. He still had the receipt, and there was a branch of the shop just around the corner. It was one way to get some money.
With the cash he bought cheap fruit in the market, and water, and matches and looked at the sleeping bags in the hiking shop, but they were too expensive. By the time he walked out of the town on a back lane that led up past farms and under the railway line into the countryside, it was past three and already getting dark. The osprey swooped overhead, a shadow in the growing twilight. Then it flew off to the west, and was gone.
A mile or so down the lane he came to a stile on his right; above it a leaning metal post pointed. PUBLIC FOOTPATH, it said, in Welsh and English. Beyond it a scrubby ungrazed field stretched down to a small wood. Nothing moved in its stillness; no birds sang, there were no cattle or sheep. In the dim twilight over the trees a few faint stars shone.
Cal climbed the gate, and entered the Waste Land.
Chapter Twenty
“If thou go there, thou wilt not come back alive.”
“Wilt thou be a guide to me there?” asked Peredur.
“I will show thee a way,” said she.
Peredur
She was screaming at him. It happened; usually she was tearful and slurred her speech, but sometimes, without warning, she was screaming. Only now it was in some other language, French maybe, and he couldn’t understand it. They were in Trevor’s immaculate room, and she snatched up the Greek vase from the glass table and threw it; it smashed in pieces against the pale walls.
Cal said, “Look. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.” It was what he always said. Soothing noises. Anything.
He couldn’t remember how the row had started. But it was his fault. He knew that.
She flung a glass at him; he ducked and Guinness spattered the wall. He stared at it in horror. Now she was throwing cushions, and an ashtray, and the radio, which crashed into the glass shelves and brought the whole lot down on top of him, a showering of light fragments, cold, cutting.
She was screaming in his ears, close to his face.
He opened his eyes.
The wind. It was the wind, howling, and it was snow that was falling on him; snow that had drifted in a great scatter from the laden branches of the hedge. He groaned, wormed farther in, sweating despite the raw weather. He didn’t want to wake, because that meant the cold came back, the terrible ache in his fingers, the numbness of his face, the shivering. But if he slept even for a moment he dreamed, and the dreams were worse, they were a torment, and there was no way away from them.
Curled, he closed his eyes tight, feeling the tiny rustle of dried leaves against his cheek, the icy mud soft and yielding, the infinitesimal patter of snow. All across the fields it was falling, tiny hard flakes, and it was settling and not melting, and since late that afternoon the land had been turning white. Only the trees were dark; stark leafless shapes.
It was his third night in the dark land. Or third week? For a moment he couldn’t remember and snapped his eyes open in alarm, staring at the black thorns and briars above him.
He had been walking so long his body ached and his legs felt trembly; he had been hungry days ago but that had gone now, leaving a sort of light-headed emptiness. The food had more or less run out; he had some hazelnuts and rock-hard cheese but those had to be kept. Supplies. He grinned, weakly. Like the games he had played years back, with the other kids in the park. Survival. Camouflage.
Snow drifted into his eyes. He closed them again, and the darkness seemed warmer.
Shadow and Hawk were pulling him into the van. It was a long way up, there were too many steps, and over the door was a sign saying VACANCIES. It made him laugh; he couldn’t stop. Weakly he giggled, and Shadow snapped, “What? What’s so funny?” But before he could tell her, the microwave pinged, and Hawk went to it.
“No!” Cal jumped up out of the warm chair. “Don’t open that!”
Slowly, with a deliberate grin, Hawk opened it. Fish poured out, a shining, slithering, stinking mass. They cascaded out, onto the floor, filling the van up, more and more of them, and Leo flung his net out and Bron sat in the boat and said, “One day, we may catch a real treasure, a fish with a ring in its belly. Like the old tales.”
Cal sat up, pushing the fish away, and his hands were cold and the icy mush plopped and slid. He was on a slab in a market stall. He was under the hedge. He was freezing.
Get up. Get up and walk. You had to. If you didn’t you’d go to sleep and never wake up, all the books told you that. Find shelter. Light a fire.
He staggered up, scratching his face on the brambles. The rucksack was light; he barely felt it now as he flung it on and climbed out of the ditch. At once the wind struck him. He bent, wrapping his arms around his body, clutching his thin coat tight, struggling over the humped, tussocky, boggy field. There had to be a road, a way back.
But he had been looking forever. It was as if he had entered some other world. This was not Wales. This was not England. He had fallen into the crack between them. He had walked off the map. There were no birds and no houses. In the night no lights shone, not even the distant red glimmer of town streetlights reflecting on cloud. He had walked on and on in a landscape of overgrown meadows and desolate hillsides, of small, cascading streams, bitter cold to drink from, tasting of ice. Long ago he had told himself he was a fool, and had tried to head back to the road, but there was no road, anywhere, anymore, and none of the maps were any use because this place was not real anyway. He had burned them, crouching in a small copse, holding his swollen fingers over the useless yellow flames.
Once a knight had jumped out from under a stone, and fought him. He had the bruises. He knew it had happened.