‘Okay. Stay, then. But you don’t rule me. The Red Queen is going to be fierce and brave, and never run away from anything ever again. She’s going to be beautiful and strong and happy, and she and Crows are going to rescue her friends. If you’re coming along, you do what I say from now on, not the other way around.’
She stood her ground, and the monster folded itself back into the mist, slowly, until there was a moment when she thought it had gone, but it hadn’t. Then the whiteness faded, stretched out and grew ragged. She could see the trees, and through the trees, the lake, and by the lake, Crows.
He raised a sceptical eyebrow as she approached, breathless.
‘You know that, like most things, magic is not safe.’ His shadow-drawing hung in tatters behind him.
‘Now you tell me.’ Her own mist was a few streamers still curled in the hollows of trees. She straightened her back. ‘It didn’t hurt me.’
‘It could have done. You are unteachable, and we should stop this at once before you come to harm.’
‘But it didn’t hurt me, Crows. It was nothing in the end. I’m fine.’
‘You did not do what I told you to.’ He was adamant. ‘How else will you learn if you do not pay attention to your lessons?’
She took a step back and held her hand up to the sun, so that one side was in the light, the other in the shadow. She brought her hand down, painting the sky with a thick black stripe.
‘I always paid attention when the teacher told me something useful. It’s just that they didn’t do that very often.’
She added legs and arms to make a black stick figure, and finished it off with a coal-black head.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’
For a moment, she thought she’d misjudged the situation, that he’d take offence and storm off. She needed him, and he didn’t need her. She should apologise.
‘I… Crows. I was so bored in school. I learnt next to nothing. And that was when I could be bothered to turn up. This◦– this is different. I’m actually excited by something. I’ll try and do my best from now on.’
‘You are very good, Mary, a natural. But while magic is not something you do by rote, you have to learn the techniques before you can create works of great beauty and power. It is an art, and all artists start by learning how to hold a brush.’ He grinned at her, his white teeth bright in the sunlight. ‘No more mist monsters. For now, anyway. You were lucky to survive that encounter, so let us not tempt fate by doing it again.’
The grin wasn’t happy. Crows was nervous, edgy.
‘How much trouble was I in?’
‘There are stories. Some of those who have such encounters swear never to use magic again. There are those who never recover. They are broken by seeing themselves as they truly are. So said the man who taught me. And you conjure your demons on the first attempt. What you did was very dangerous.’
‘But I know what I am. It’s just that I don’t like it. I want to be something different.’
‘The Red Queen.’ He was calmer now. He picked at her stick figure creation, like it was peeling paint, or an old black bin-liner left out in the sun and the rain for too long. ‘You are unusual. Most people imagine themselves to be better than they are. Not you. You are better than you believe yourself to be. That saved you, but please, do not do it again.’
‘What did you see, Crows?’
He turned away, and muttered.
‘What?’
He couldn’t look at her, so he addressed the clouds.
‘I saw nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘Nothing? But that’s…’ Then she understood. Not nothing as in nothing at all, but everything, and Crows’ place within it. ‘Oh. You’re not, though.’
‘I am a child from a place that no longer exists, I am a man invisible to other men. As the King of Crows, I was unable to protect the people I thought I could protect. I am drawn in darkness and to darkness I will return. I have seen it, and even though I fight against it every day, I will fall eventually.’
‘You can be whatever you want to be, Crows,’ said Mary.
‘Despite my best efforts, it is what I want to be. I know about new beginnings and becoming your heart’s desire, but we must realise that some people’s dreams are darker than others.’ He scrubbed his fingers against his face and looked haunted for a moment. ‘Can you swim?’
‘Me? No.’ She was unsettled by Crows’ gloom, and was glad for the change of subject.
‘Are you scared of water, then? It was said that it was unlucky for a sailor to learn to swim: by who, I do not know, because they were idiots. Swimming is important. Bridges are rare on Down, and lakes and rivers are not.’ He took off his shirt in one fluid motion, and threw it to the ground behind him. She caught the barest glimpse of a series of ridged scars on his otherwise smooth belly, before he turned. He started wading out into the lake, the water enveloping his legs.
‘I haven’t got anything to wear,’ she said.
‘My intentions are wholly honourable, Mary. It does not matter what you do or do not wear, only that you learn.’
She thought about it. She hadn’t washed properly in days◦– apart from the river crossing, and that didn’t count as being washed.
‘There aren’t any monsters in the lake, are there?’
‘If I said yes, would you learn to swim quicker?’
‘No.’
‘Then no, there are no monsters in the lake.’ Crows was up to his waist. He ducked down and disappeared. After what felt like forever, he reappeared, far off to one side. ‘No monsters but us,’ he called.
He was lying, obviously, but seemed totally unconcerned about being eaten by sea serpents or giant sharks or whatever. She had a vest top on under her boilersuit which, yes, would turn transparent, but it wasn’t like she’d be spending much time with even her head above water.
She sat down and kicked off her boots, dumped her socks in the tops, and pulled at the heavy zip on the boilersuit, listening to the way it growled as she dragged it down. Crows was busy diving down under the surface, emerging elsewhere, spitting water in a tall fountain, then jackknifing under again, all away from her.
Did she dare do this? Crows was sad and alone, but she got the impression that her presence wouldn’t change that, that he didn’t want her to change that, that he simply wasn’t interested in her in that way. He’d never looked her up and down with predatory intent, and she◦– no: he was too different, too otherworldly and out of time. But they could be friends, and if they were friends, what else mattered?
She shucked the boilersuit and left it on the shore next to her boots, and ran the short distance across the sharp grit into the water.
It was cold like a knife was cold.
‘Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.’
She was up to her calves, her knees, mid-thighs, wading forward, ice water splashing on her pale brown skin like glitter, goosebumps making her skin puckered.
She tripped, and fell. Her arms came forward to stop her, and she plunged headfirst into the stirred-up silt. The water closed over her, and the shock of it, the way it thieved the heat from her, almost made her gasp. Her lungs strained for breath, and her arms and legs flailed as she tried to find her feet. It didn’t occur to her to close her eyes, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of another kingdom, of weeds and fishes and green sunlight.
Then she came up with a shout, hair coiled like oiled springs behind her and over her shoulders, the sun warm against the chill of the lake. Crows flipped himself under, reappearing wide-eyed and closer, and Mary used her hands to manoeuvre herself towards him, feeling the embrace of the water against every inch of her body.