We sat there for a long time. Over an hour, I noted when I glanced at my watch, though Miles frowned so vehemently I didn’t check again. Now and then I’d glance at him from the corner of my eye. He still stared resolutely at the patch of garden, his expression remote as Cleopatra’s sphinxes.
Another hour might have passed. The wind shifted. The rain stopped, and it felt warmer; the light slanting through the linden branches grew tinged with violet.
Beside me, Miles abruptly drew a deeper breath as his body tensed. His face grew rigid, his eyes widened, and his mouth parted. I must have moved as well—he hissed warningly, and my gaze flashed back to the swath of green.
At the base of the plane tree something moved. A falling leaf, I thought, or a ribbon of peeling bark trapped between the tangled roots.
Then it gave an odd, sudden hop, and I thought it was some sort of wren, or even a large frog, or perhaps a child’s toy.
The something scurried across the turf and stopped. For the first time I saw it clearly: a creature the size of my balled fist, a hedgehog surely—pointed snout, upraised spines, a tiny out-thrust arrow of a tail, legs invisible beneath its rounded torso.
But it was green—a brilliant, jewel-like green, like the carapace of a scarab beetle. Its spikes weren’t spikes at all but tiny overlapping scales, or maybe feathers shot through with iridescent mauve and amethyst as it moved. Its eyes were the rich damson of a pansy’s inner petals, and as it nosed at the grass I saw that its snout ended in a beak like an echidna’s, the same deep purple as its eyes. I gasped, and felt Miles stiffen as the creature froze and raised its head slightly. A moment later it looked down and once more began poking at the grass.
My heart raced. I shut my eyes, fighting to calm myself but also to determine if this was a dream or some weird drunken flashback inspired by Miles.
But when I looked again the creature was still there, scurrying obliviously between tree roots and cowslips. Its beaklike snout poked into the soft black earth, occasionally emerged with a writhing worm or beetle impaled upon it. Once, the wind stirred a dead leaf: startled, the creature halted. Its scales rose to form a stiff, brilliantly colored armor, a farthingale glimmering every shade of violet and green.
Vermilion claws protruded from beneath its body; a bright droplet appeared at the end of the pointed beak as it made an ominous, low humming sound, like a swarm of bees.
A minute crept by, and when no predator appeared, the scales flattened, the shining claws withdrew, and the creature scurried as before. Sometimes it came to the very edge of the garden plot, where upright paving stones formed an embankment. I would hold my breath then, terrified that I’d frighten it, but the creature only thrust its beak fruitlessly between the cracks, and finally turned back.
In all that time I neither heard nor saw another person save Miles, silent as a statue beside me—I was so focused upon the creature’s solitary hunt that I might have been bludgeoned or robbed, and never known it.
Gradually the afternoon wore away; gradually the world about us took on a lavender cast that deepened, from hyacinth to heliotrope to the leaden, enveloping gloom of London’s winter twilight. Without warning, the creature lifted its head from where it had been feeding, turned, scurried back toward the plane tree, and disappeared into one of the holes there. I blinked and held my breath again, willing it to reappear.
It never did. After a minute Miles leaned back against the bench and stretched. He looked at me and smiled, yet his eyes were sad. More than sad: he appeared heartbroken.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded. Two teenagers walking side by side and texting on their mobiles glanced at me and laughed.
“The emerald foliot,” Miles replied.
“What the hell is the emerald foliot?”
He shrugged. “What you saw—that’s it. Don’t get pissy with me; it’s all I know.”
He jumped to his feet and bounced up and down on his heels.
“Jesus, I’m frozen. Let’s get out of here. I’ll walk you back across the bridge.”
My leg was asleep, so it was a moment before I could run to catch up with him.
“For fuck’s sake, Miles, you have to tell me what that was—what that was all about.”
“I told you all I know.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, shivering now himself. “God, it’s cold. It’s called the emerald foliot—”
“Who calls it the emerald foliot?”
“Well, me. And the person who showed me. And now you.”
“But who showed you? Are there more? I mean, it should be in a museum or a zoo or—Christ, I don’t know! Something. Are they studying it? Why doesn’t anyone know about it?”
Miles stopped beneath the overhang at the entrance to the tube station. He leaned against the wall, out of the wind, and a short distance from the throngs hurrying home from work. “Nobody knows because nobody knows, Robbie. You know, and I know, and the person who told me knows. And I guess if he—or she—is still alive, the person who told him knows.
“But that’s it—that’s all. In the whole entire world, we’re the only ones.”
His eyes glittered—with excitement, but also tears. He wiped them away, unashamed, and smiled. “I wanted you to know, Robbie. I wanted you to be the next one.”
I rubbed my forehead, in impatience and disbelief, swore loudly, then aligned myself against the wall at his side. I was trying desperately to keep my temper.
“Next one what?” I said at last.
“The next one who knows. That’s how it works—someone shows you, just like I showed you. But then—”
His voice broke, and he went on. “But then the other person, the first person—we never go there again. We never see it again. Ever.”
“You mean it only comes out once a year or something?”
He shook his head sadly. “No. It comes out all the time—I mean, I assume it does, but who knows? I’ve only seen it twice. The first time was when someone showed me. And now, the second time, the last time—with you.”
“But.” I took a deep breath, fumbled instinctively in my pocket for a cigarette, though I’d quit years ago.
“Here.” Miles withdrew a leather cigarette case, opened it, and offered one to me, took one for himself, then lit both.
I inhaled deeply, waited before speaking again. “OK. So you showed it to me, and someone showed it to you—who? When?”
“I can’t tell you. But a long time ago—right after college, I guess.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“I just can’t.” Miles stared at the pavement. “It’s not allowed.”
“Who doesn’t allow it?”
“I don’t know. It’s just not done. And you—”
He lifted his head to gaze at me, his eyes burning. “You can’t tell anyone either, Robbie. Ever. Not until it’s your turn, and you show someone else.”
“And then it’s over? I never see it again?”
He nodded. “That’s right. You never see it again.”
I felt a surge of impatience, and despair. “Just twice, in my whole life?”
He smiled. “That’s more than most people get. More than anyone gets, except us.”
“And whoever showed you, and whoever showed her. Or him.”
Miles finished his cigarette, dropped it, and ground it fastidiously beneath the tip of one oxblood shoe. I did the same, and together we began to walk back upstairs.
“So how long has this been going on?” We stepped onto Hungerford Bridge, and I stopped to look down at the fractal view of the park, no longer green but yellowish from the glow of crime lights. “A hundred years? Thousands?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, the park wasn’t always there, but something was, before they made the embankment. The river. Enormous houses. But I think it’s gone on longer than that.”