“Not unless they want it to.” He frowned. “Are you wearing anything magical? Anything enchanted?”
She shrugged. “No.”
“Leave the pack.”
“No! It has food and water in it. If I eat anything Shee, you know they’ve got me forever.”
He hissed in frustration. Then he said, “Let’s try this way.”
As the Wood deepened, the trees seemed taller, their branches meshing far above the combe. The sunken lane became a knee-deep trough of dead leaves, as if oak and elm and rowan shed thousands here each winter and they never rotted, accumulating through centuries. Sarah felt herself sink into their wet softness, deep, up to her waist, and for a moment before Gideon grabbed her she was afraid that she would fall and be suffocated under them all, like some lost wanderer in a fairy tale. And then the leaves thinned, and the path was a slippery incline of cobbles, rainwater gushing down it.
Gideon’s hair was soaked; he turned up the collar of his green coat in silent misery.
“What’s the matter with the world?” he whispered.
“Might she know we’re here?” Sarah caught his arm, stopped him.
The thought turned him sick. “I don’t know. It could be just that the Summerland has reconfigured—it’s always changing, just like she is. Always changing but always the same. And since she got so angry with Venn, the rain has dripped and soaked the whole Wood. As if she wants to drown all mortals.”
Sarah frowned. “Come on. We have to keep going.”
By the bottom of the combe the path was a streambed they waded through. It trickled into a green clearing, the grass lush and long, soaked with floodwater.
In the very center stood a circular well, the empty bucket tipped by its side.
Sarah stopped. “Seen that before?”
“No.” Gideon considered. “So that must mean something.”
They squelched across. The grass was emerald, shimmering with raindrops. In each drop was a rainbow. Sarah could smell mint, as if it grew tiny among the roots and was crushed underfoot.
At the well coping, Gideon leaned over and looked down. A small stone stairway spiraled inside, into the dark. Beside him, Sarah stared at the smooth wet slabs, the tiny fronds sprouting from their cracks.
“Down there?” she murmured.
The well took her words and whispered them, around and around.
Jackdaws rose and cawed in the Wood, far off.
Gideon glanced up nervously. “It seems so.”
Halfway to the village the motorbike shuddered. The engine coughed, spluttered, and then died.
Rebecca cursed.
“What?” Jake yelled.
“Petrol. No petrol!”
Inside the dark helmet, he heard the rain pattering in the sudden quiet. “Piers,” he said. “He probably magicked it all away.” Lifting the visor, he looked around.
They were at the crossroads where three lanes met, at the finger-post that leaned in the hedge and said: Wintercombe 1. Druid’s Acre 2. Marley 5.
Opposite, roofed with corrugated iron sheets, an ancient stone barn gleamed under the gray rain.
“What now?” Rebecca turned. “We could go back.”
“Not yet.” Jake took the helmet off; she saw how he was alert, his whole body listening. “Do you hear that?”
She undid the chin-strap and lifted the helmet; immediately the rain gusted cold on her hair. Nothing but its pattering on the leaves came to her.
But Jake had already dumped his helmet and was moving, swift and stealthy, toward the derelict barn.
As she followed him, she heard it too.
A soft giggle, a whisper. And then chanting, the high thin voices of kids, meaningless words, a screech of laughter.
“Jake . . .”
“Keep quiet. It’s them.”
She crouched beside him. “Who? The Shee?”
He shook his head, impatient. “The replicants. Janus.”
Then he was gone, up against the ivy-dark of the barn, a shadow slipping along the wall.
When she got to him, she was breathless. Rain dripped from her fingers. Jake reached the door. It was ajar, the wood warped and ill-fitting; he eased it a fraction wider. They saw inside.
Three small children were sitting around a fire. They had dragged some kindling together and lit it on the cleared floor, and it crackled and spat, as if the wood was wet. The boys were identical, so that as Rebecca looked from one to another it was impossible to tell them apart. Their school clothes were grubby and frayed; they wore small black wellington boots and duffel coats with broken toggles. One had his cap on backward.
Another was stirring something in a propped tin can among the charred sticks; to Rebecca it smelled fishy, like some rancid stew. He was singing:
Round and round the garden
like a teddy bear . . .
Then he looked up. Straight toward the door. “Why not come in, Jake?” he said.
“Out of the rain,” the third added, cleaning steam from his small specs.
Jake swore under his breath.
He stepped out, into the barn.
Rebecca stayed where she was. Maybe they didn’t know she was there. Seeing them now, she understood that these children were all replicants of Janus. Even at this age they had the calm menace she remembered, the considering stare through the round lenses, the unbreakable certainty of the small thin man who ruled Sarah’s far future world.
Jake stood there boldly. He folded his arms. “I’ve been looking for you. I want to tell you that I won’t betray Sarah to you and that I’ll find my father myself. I don’t need you.”
They gazed at him with a detached interest.
“He’s crazy.”
“He believes it.”
“He has no idea.”
Jake stepped closer. He was much taller than them; he crouched, bringing his face down to their level, close up. He saw himself reflected in three pairs of round glasses.
“And you have no idea about me. Who I am. What I can do.”
They smiled. Secret, closed-up smiles.
“Pride, Jake.”
“Comes before a fall, Jake.”
The last boy tasted the brew in the tin can and made a face. “Always your Achilles’ heel, Jake. Maybe you’ve managed to find out where your father is. But maybe he’s too far back for you to reach. That’s a problem for you. Not for me, though. I can reach anyone in all of time, Jake, because I’m not afraid to use the mirror. Already I’ve made myself many. I will make myself immortal.”
“You’re the one who’s crazy.”
“As for Sarah, all she wants is to destroy the mirror. She’s not worried about your father.”
“Of course she is. Besides, she . . .”
“She’s already gone to get the coin.”
Jake froze. His mind groped after the sentence with a dread that chilled him. “Gone . . . ? What do you mean, the coin? She doesn’t know.”
“Yes she does.”
“You told her, Jake.”
“She overheard you telling Wharton.”
He gasped. Behind him, he heard Rebecca stand and hurry forward. But the barn was already empty, the fire cold ashes, the tin cup a tipped and congealed mess.
And the children were only three shadows of himself, crouching on hands and knees, across the floor.
17
Confidential report
Department of Covert Operations
Scotland Yard.
Ref2238198/453
Subject: SYMMES, Alicia
An anonymous phone call was received by a local
station on Weds 6th June 1940 suggesting subject