After that, she kept ending up in strange places. She learned to look forward to the lost seconds, the thrilling, inexplicable journey from where she was to somewhere else. She would feel powerful yet passive. Years later, she had the same sensation on a funfair ride, the way the car whirled her backwards in a tight curve, a motion that was slow at first, oddly hydraulic, then high-speed, blurry, irresistible. She couldn’t always regulate it, though, certainly not in the beginning. Sometimes it took her by surprise, like the afternoon she stepped outside during a gale and her mother found her as the sun was setting, two miles down the towpath and halfway up a tree.
Under the velvet my body jerked, tension leaving my muscles at long last.
One day she went walking with her parents in the fields near the canal. The wind was blowing hard again, and she had lifted her arms away from her sides and leaned against it, as if it were a wall. Then she was gone. Her parents had been looking at her when it happened, waiting for her to catch up with them. In the next moment they heard her calling from the far end of the field. Though it scared them half to death, it also came as something of a relief. In the past they had often been at a loss to explain her movements, but now, perhaps, they had an answer. She should protect her gift, they told her. Keep it to herself. She did the opposite, of course.
I was falling away. Sinking. A light object dropping through thick liquid.
The trouble was, she had never been popular at school. Her looks seemed to unnerve people. They could never tell what she was thinking. To try and win them over, she started doing tricks. Once, while in the company of two girls from her class, she used a gust of wind to transport her from the school playground to the roof of the bicycle shed. Up here, she shouted. I’m up here. The girls wouldn’t have anything to do with her after that. They claimed she’d hypnotised them. All they would talk about was her weird eyes. Green, they said, but black too, somehow, like fir trees planted too close together. Black like a forest. And her face as well, the freckles. It made them think of one of those roadsigns in the country that people have fired guns at –
I woke to see bright fragments lying on the floor. Despite the barred window and its mask of vines and creepers, the sun had managed to penetrate the room. I turned in the bed. The girl’s eyes slid open.
‘You slept,’ she said.
I sat up and yawned, the memory of her story still with me. It seemed to have been addressed to the naive or credulous side of me. It appeared to be testing my ability to suspend my disbelief. But maybe that was the whole point. She had claimed to be capable of extraordinary things. I was supposed to have faith in her.
She had been out, she said, just before dawn. The men had gone. As for my friends …
I rose to my feet and walked into the corner of the room. I found a cobweb that spanned both walls and pushed gently at the sticky threads. They had surprising resilience. Behind me, the girl had fallen silent, aware that I had heard enough. When she spoke again, she approached the subject from a different angle.
We would have to lie low, she said. Let things settle. In the meantime, she had a change of clothes for me. It wouldn’t be wise to be dressed as one of the White People, not at the moment. If I wanted to wash, there was a water-butt outside. I turned to face her. She was sitting on the faded velvet, lacing up her boots.
Yes, I said inside my head. I’d like to wash.
She handed me a bag containing the clothes, then she unbolted the door. I followed her down the staircase and into the cellar. While she looked outside, to make sure there was nobody around, I stared at the walls. I’d just noticed the graffiti. Genitals, both male and female, all highly exaggerated.
‘Originally this would have been a guest-house for the priory,’ the girl said. ‘Later, it became the vicarage. The vicar was moved out during the Rearrangement.’ She was standing just inside the room, shaking water off her hands. ‘After he went, the place was taken over by the military. They trained border guards here. You can see what kind of people they must have been.’ Her eyes drifted across the walls without showing any expression. ‘I don’t know why they left. Maybe the novelty wore off. It’s been empty for a while now.’ She glanced at me. ‘You go and wash if you like. I’ll wait here.’
The hinges let out a croak as I pushed the door open.
It was the most perfect morning. Beneath a blue sky the snow had the restrained glitter of caster sugar, and it lay evenly on everything, the branches of the trees half white, half black. The air had absolute clarity and crispness; simply to stand and breathe felt like a luxury. I thought I could hear the trickle of a stream, but it might have been the river on the far side of the field — or perhaps the snow had already started melting. There was a tension to the stillness, as if the beauty of the day could not be sustained for long.
I moved to the water-butt and stripped off my white garments. Spattered with mud, ashes and dried blood, they stood out quite distinctly against the snow. I kicked off one boot, then the other. They lay there awkwardly like a pair of crows that had been shot in mid-air and then plummeted to earth. Bending over the barrel, I brought handful after handful of water to my face. The cold made me gasp. My skin stung. The ring that hung around my neck knocked against the barrel’s lip as I leaned forwards. My fingers soon went numb. I took care not to lift my eyes towards the ridge. I didn’t want to think about what had happened there.
I dried myself on my undershirt, then dressed in the clothes the girl had given me — jeans, a black sweater, thick wool socks and a cheap brown leather coat. I felt in my cloak pocket. It was empty. The key to the front door of the Cliff was gone. So was the lighter and the book of dreams. I must have lost them when I fell. Still fastened to my wrist, though, was my watch, the one that didn’t tell the time. I pulled my boots back on, then folded up the cloak.
When I walked back into the cellar, the girl glanced round, and a single ray of sun reached through a broken pane high in the wall, lighting up her face. I understood what her classmates had meant about her eyes. They were neither black nor green, and yet both colours were involved, somehow.
‘Let’s go back up,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’
Like peasants from another period of history, we breakfasted on bread, cheese, pickled onions and red wine. While we ate and drank, the girl outlined her plan. We were deep in the Yellow Quarter, so there was no easy option. If we travelled south and luck was on our side, we could reach the Red Quarter in four or five days. It might be dangerous, but it would be better than heading east and crossing into the Green Quarter, where the authorities were probably still looking for me. Also, we would only have to cross one border, not two. We would have to pretend to be a couple, though. A choleric couple. Had I seen how they behaved? No? Well, the beauty of it was I didn’t need to talk. The kind of man she had in mind was more likely to hit a woman than speak to her. The women tended to nag and moan, while the men just grunted or read the papers.
‘That’s all you have to do,’ she said. ‘Ignore me. You can do that, can’t you?’
I nodded slowly. Of course I could ignore her. I didn’t know her. When we first arrived in the room, she’d asked if I remembered her. What was that about? I still had no idea.
After breakfast she suggested a game of draughts to pass the time. I scratched out a board on the floor with a stone while she went to look for objects we could use as pieces. She returned with some chunks of burnt wood and fragments of stained glass, all of which she had collected in the church. We played for most of the morning, and I didn’t win once.