Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘I don’t trust him,’ Church said, ‘but I think at the moment his aims and ours coincide, and for now that’s good enough for me.’

Shavi sipped his beer thoughtfully as he watched the flames leap up the chimney. ‘It seems to me from what you have said that the Puck has been playing a long game, for millennia. There has always been purpose in his mischief.’

‘What’s that? Leading humanity off the edge of a cliff?’ Laura finished her beer and took Tom’s when he wasn’t looking.

‘A creature of wild magic like the Puck could not be content living in a universe ruled by the Void,’ Shavi mused. ‘Those other figures you saw, Church — the Caretaker, the man and woman with the cauldron — they appear to represent powers above and beyond gods like the Tuatha De Danann. An alliance, perhaps, against darkness and despair.’

‘But we’re just pawns to them,’ Ruth said. ‘They don’t care if we live or die as long as we serve their ends.’ The bitterness in her voice surprised them all.

‘If there is one thing we have learned,’ Shavi began soothingly, ‘it is that there are currents of meaning all around us, shifting forces that we cannot comprehend but which guide us in a subtle way. I do not know what those forces are, but I do know we are not alone in this battle.’

‘Listen to him,’ Tom grunted. ‘He’s the only one of you lot that talks any sense.’

‘None of it makes any sense to me!’ Ruth’s voice cracked and she stalked off in the direction of their rooms.

‘Looks like Miss Frosty’s got the painters and decorators in.’ Laura sniffed. ‘I’m going to have her beer.’

As midnight approached, Tom and Shavi went out to sit on the hotel porch. Gas heaters roared but did little to dispel the bitter cold. They braved the temperature for the view: the moon transformed the frozen landscape into a shimmering white dream.

Shavi took a deep breath that filled his lungs with ice. ‘Do you know why I have such hope for us?’ he said softly.

‘Because you’re deluded?’

‘This world is too amazing to be ruled by the essence of despair. Everywhere I look I see wonder — resting beneath the gentle drift of snow, in a city street steaming in the summer sun, in October rain on a factory window. Magic, just waiting for us to release it.’

‘Very poetic. Now, have you turned that incisive human eye on your own comrades?’ The ember of Tom’s roll-up glowed red as he inhaled.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you have two who are deranged by their own hormones, and two who are facing a rising obstacle between them, which they cannot yet see. If they don’t sort themselves out and focus on what really matters, disaster will creep up like a thief in the night.’

‘You can see that with your precog abilities?’

‘I don’t know what I see any more,’ Tom replied bitterly. ‘When the queen of the Court of the Yearning Heart arranged to torment me through the abilities I was given, I had centuries to adjust to the visions of the future that came to me. Yet there were none beyond a certain time because I was fated to die. Now everything has changed. I see new things all the time — flashes of terrible events — but I do not yet have a context for them. And so I am useless.’

Shavi was saddened to hear the raw emotion in Tom’s voice. ‘Yet you sense something bad is going to happen?’

‘Oh, yes. Very bad indeed.’

Shavi’s attention was caught by a flicker of movement far out across the snowy waste near the dark line of fir trees. He couldn’t tell if it was man or beast, for it appeared to move first on two legs, then on four. With it came a palpable sense of apprehension.

‘I think we should go in now,’ he said.

Church followed Ruth back to their room where he found her staring disconsolately out of the window. Since they had landed in Norway she felt more distant than she ever had at any point during their two-thousand-year separation.

‘Look at it,’ she said without turning around. ‘It’s such a bleak, frozen place. I hate it here.’

Church rested a hand on her shoulder, but she remained rigid. ‘Tell me what’s on your mind.’

‘No point,’ she said. ‘There’s no space for you and me. We’ve got a job to do and that sucks every iota of energy out of everything.’

‘What is it? You weren’t like this when we first got back together.’ With an aching clarity, he recalled her kiss that had woken him from the Sleep Like Death, and the joy of their time together as they travelled to Cornwall for the confrontation with Veitch. And then, with a chill, it hit him: that was when it had all changed. So subtle at first that he hadn’t noticed it, but now he could trace the lines of dislocation directly back to that point.

When Ruth turned, he could see she’d reached the same conclusion. ‘He got his revenge in the end, didn’t he? One last attempt to ruin something good.’ She brushed away a stray tear. ‘When Veitch leaped on his sword to kill himself, that bolt of black lightning burned through the three of us. What did it do? I feel it inside me now … drawing me away from you.’

‘Fight it,’ he said.

‘For some reason, it’s growing stronger.’ She stared at her hands as if she would be able to see what had infected her. ‘I feel cold, distant, tired, negative. I feel tearful, irritable and depressed. I can’t see any good in anything any more, just at the point when I’ve finally found it.’ There was a moment of silence before she added, ‘If Veitch wasn’t dead, I’d kill him with my own hands.’

By the fire, Hunter and Laura had moved on from the beer and were working their way through a bottle of tequila.

‘You enjoy doing this?’ Hunter lounged in his chair, boots on the table. ‘Risking death. Fighting a war you can’t win. Going up against things that would give most people nightmares.’

‘Life’s about living, dude. What’s the point in inching forward just so you can arrive at death safely? Experience, that’s what we all want.’

‘If you want experience …’ He held out his arms.

‘What kind of women do you normally get, Hunter? Do they fall for that big-man act?’

‘What do you fall for?’

‘I’m class. I expect dedication, hard work, attention to detail and complete adoration. Because I deserve it.’

Hunter thought for a moment as he weighed his shot glass in one hand. ‘I might be able to do that.’

‘I’ll get back to you.’

Laura shivered. It felt as if the door had been thrown open, but it was firmly shut and there was no discernible draught. She looked around the bar. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘It’s just you and me-’

‘Stop being a dick.’ The hairs on her neck tingled. ‘Something’s up.’ Her attention fell on a clock in the shape of a sunburst over the fire. It showed two minutes to midnight.

‘And the clock’s stopped.’

From the ruins of the ancient watchtower stretched a pastoral landscape of fields and woods, winding lanes, sparkling streams and small hamlets where wisps of smoke drifted up from thatched homesteads.

‘I think I’ve been here before.’ Caitlin shielded her eyes from the glare of the morning sun. ‘Or was it a dream?’

After they had crossed over from the cathedral, Caitlin, Mallory and Sophie had taken a long time to come to terms with the delirious new world that had been presented to them. Every sight, sound and smell was heightened, rendering their own world a pale copy.

But Jerzy was insistent that they move on quickly, warning of the many dangers that lurked in the Far Lands. Stripping off his mask and coat, his true appearance shocked them all — a bone-white face with a permanent rictus grin — but he revelled in the freedom to be himself, performing tumbles and dances whenever the mood took him.