'Bloody ex-student,' Harvey muttered. Mary erupted into a twilight sky high over Wilmington, filled with an overwhelming sense of failure, but not really knowing why. Below her, on Windover Hill, the god was slowly closing the door with a fizz of blue fire. Her confusion and dismay were quickly supplanted by a burst of unfocused anxiety. She trusted her instinct in the spirit-form, where every thought and sensation was heightened, and quickly looked around for the source. What she saw made all the ecstasy of her current state quickly drain away. Her body was not where she had left it. It had been dragged twenty feet across Dragon Hill. The culprit stood nearby: the twisted dead man she was sure had died in the fire, looking completely untouched by the conflagration that had engulfed him.
It was being tormented by the Elysium, but in their spectral state they clearly had no true ability to physically stop him. They swooped and soared around him, their faces transformed by howls of pain. For a moment, Mary was locked in panic. How could she have been so stupid as to leave her body in such an exposed position? She knew the risks: if her body died while she was in spirit-form, she would drift like a ghost before she finally broke up and blew away.
The Jigsaw Man lashed out at the Elysium, somehow clearly able to see them. Sharish broke off from the battle and rushed up to Mary like a beam of light reflected off glass.
'You must come quickly,' he said. 'We cannot hold him off much longer.'
But Mary was already moving before the final word had been uttered. She re-entered her body with force, desperate not to accept the usual period of lazy readjustment, tinged with sadness, her limbs feeling as heavy as lead, her head stuffed with cotton wool. She attempted to get to her feet, but her legs buckled beneath her. It felt as if a rock pressed on her shoulders. The Jigsaw Man noticed her sudden movement and instantly ignored the Elysium. Its gait was as fast as it had been in the abandoned house, slow for a split second, then speeded-up and jerky. Dead hands clasped around Mary's throat before she had barely registered that the Jigsaw Man had moved.
'You must fight him!' Sharish said. 'We can do nothing.'
The fingers clamped tighter and tighter. Mary couldn't breathe; the pressure in her head grew intense.
'Use the Blue Fire!' Sharish pressed. 'Your kind have always been able to manipulate it.'
As the oxygen disappeared, a strange clarity came over Mary and she knew exactly what Sharish was telling her. She recalled the lines of earth energy rushing from Dragon Hill to the Long Man, and with one grasping hand reached down to the scrubby grass. Her fingers clutched at the air, missed, clutched again, and somehow she was able to extend herself enough to scrape the ground.
The Jigsaw Man helped by pressing her down towards it, but her life was fading fast under his rigid grip. The back of its head faced her her, but she could just glimpse the eyes, turned away, rolling wildly.
In her mind, she formed the image, but she had no idea how to activate it. And then Sharish was beside her, whispering a word in her ear that she had never heard before and which made her slightly queasy. Without thinking, she repeated it.
All she saw was blue, across her field of vision, deep in her head. Sapphire flames ran from her fingertips through her body and into the Jigsaw Man, exploding in a cascade of sparks twenty feet above her head.
When her vision cleared, her attacker spasmed on the ground several yards away, smoke rising from his joints.
'You must hurry,' Sharish said. 'The thing will not stay down long.'
'Goddess, what is it?' Mary gasped, rubbing at her sore throat as she scrambled for her clothes. 'Its power comes from you.' Sharish floated at her side while she bundled up her possessions and hurried down the hillside, Arthur Lee bounding at her heels from wherever he had been hiding. 'Despair. Self-hatred. Failure. It will not stop attempting to destroy you until all those things are gone from within you.'
'Then it'll never stop,' Mary said bitterly. 'Never.'
By the time she reached the foot of the hill her head had cleared. The blue fire rushing through her had a strange effect on her system: she felt positive for the first time in years. 'There must be something I can do to put things right,' she said to herself. She turned to Sharish. 'OK, if I failed with the god, then I want to find the Goddess.'
He shook his head slowly. 'It-'
'Don't tell me how dangerous it is. Don't tell me how I'm going to fail. Just tell me where I can find her. I've got to do one good deed before I die… before that thing gets me.'
He stared into her face. 'You are stronger than you think.'
'Don't give me flannel. I just want to help Caitlin. I've messed up again, as usual, but I can't give up now — she's depending on me.'
'Then you must be prepared for a long journey,' he said. 'And a terrible trial. You may not survive.' Time passed for Caitlin in a haze of food and rest and as much comfort as could be conjured from the makeshift premises. She was not aware of anything, least of all herself, but a part of her knew that she was cared for, and beneath the dull, flat line of her existence, that felt good. In her head, she still wandered the bleak, frozen plains of the Ice-Field, but it had become more of a Zen meditation than a desperate search for a way out. In time, perhaps she could even accept it. Thackeray never left her alone for fear she might accidentally harm herself. When they crept through the darkened streets in search of premises to ransack, he held her hand, guiding her carefully past dangers, always watching out for her. Occasionally he would take her off with Harvey for what he laughingly called a 'road trip', sitting by the canals throwing stones while Harvey attempted to fish, or breaking into the council chamber to lie on the floor and examine the majestic architecture of the sweeping ceiling.
'Even in the middle of all this you've got to seek out anything that might give you a laugh, make you feel as if you're alive,' he said one warm day on the edge of summer. 'Otherwise, what's the point?'
That night, Thackeray laid out a dinner for the three of them with a white cotton tablecloth on the floor, silver cutlery and crystal glasses for one of their very rare bottles of wine. As they sat around, with the candlelight flickering, he thought Caitlin looked more beautiful than ever and told Harvey so.
'You know, matey, I have to say this, but all this is a bit, you know… sick,' Harvey replied uneasily 'She's, like, disabled or something. Or, you know…' He tapped his temple.
'I'm not going to take advantage of her,' Thackeray replied. 'But I can still see the person she was, or is — maybe will be again. It's there in her face, just beneath the surface. A good person…'
'You think she's going to get better?'
Thackeray shrugged. 'I can't help myself.'
'I think you should get over her, mate, for your own good.'
Thackeray raised his glass to both of them and took a sip of the Zinfandel. 'Let me tell you something, Harvey. You're going to say I'm a complete wanker, but like I care what you think, right? Loving, and having someone who loves you, is addictive. Your whole being comes alive and suddenly it feels as if the life you had before was just floating in treacle. And the cliches, they're all true, like you're living some Woman's Weekly life. You can't eat, you can't sleep, you can't get her face out of your head, or the moments you spent together, and the things you did, and the words you said, and some stupid song that fixes it in melody and moment, constantly replaying, turning over, as if you were hoping you'd be able to step back into them and live them all again, just like the first time.'
Harvey smiled, but in a nice way, sipping his own wine with one self-mocking little finger extended.
'And all these other cliches,' Thackeray continued. 'Connections… gut instincts that transcend rational thought. Love at first sight, if you will. How stupid is that? You think to yourself, stay away from this person, they're bad for me, I'm settled, survival routines in place, my life would be a real mess if I threw in with them, and your subconscious, or your heart, says do it, this is right. The person in the back of your head just knows. And you can't help yourself. You're lost to it. That person — the real you in your deep, deep subconscious — he always knows what's right for you, at that particular time, what you need. And he or she recognises links that transcend physical space. You see a face, he sees a soul mate, something so deep it's rooted in both your genes. And when that connection happens, you know it's going to be high passion, that you're going to blaze like a star, and that you'll probably crash and burn soon after. And you don't care, you don't care.' He stared into the deep red depths of his wine with a faint, troubled smile.