Mark Chadbourn - Always Forever

"How are you, Jack?"

"As well as can be expected, given that my world is on the brink of being torn apart." He tried not to sound bitter; it wouldn't do any good. But he wanted to say: considering you tried to murder me with a lunatic god who could boil the blood in my veins at a gesture. Even as he thought it, contrition lit her face. "How is Maponus?" he asked.

"The Good Son is… as well as can be expected."

"Will he recover?"

She looked down. "We do what we can."

"I'm sorry."

"May we talk?" As she gently touched his hand, a spark of some indescribable energy crackled into his arm. She led him across the deck to the highest level beyond Manannan's vantage point. A table placed where one could admire the view was laid out with crystal goblets and a jug of water.

"The Master will not mind us sitting awhile. He knows I love the sea as much as he." Niamh filled two goblets, then watched the waves for several moments, a faint smile on her face.

"The Far Lands fill me with such joy," she said eventually. "In my worst times I feared them lost to me forever." She turned to him and added sadly, "As I fear I have lost you."

"What happened-"

"Fills me with the deepest regret. I was cruel and foolish in my hurt. I sought to punish you so you would feel some of my anguish."

"You tried to kill me-"

"No." She shook her head forcefully. "I would never harm you. Once I reflected on my actions, I sought to make amends. It was I who alerted my people to bring the Good Son back to the Far Lands. Yet I knew I could never take back what I had done, however much I desired to make things well between us again. And that was almost more than I could bear." She sipped at her water, the sun glinting off the glass in golden shards.

"I can't understand it. You're all so far beyond us, yet emotionally you're just as screwed up."

"Those of us who are close to Fragile Creatures still feel deeply. We have great passions. Yet it tears through us like fire in the mighty forest. It leaves us bereft. That is our curse until we move on to the next stage."

Church looked down at Manannan, who had his back to them, wondering what rules governed the evolution of the gods.

"My heart was torn apart at the thought that I had driven you away, Jack, the only thing I ever truly wanted. And so I came here, to Wave Sweeper, in the hope that I could wash away the pain with a visit to the Western Isles, where all balm lies, if one looks carefully enough."

"You've watched over me since I was a child-"

The note of sadness in her smile had a curious tone; almost too intense for what they were discussing. "I have known you for a very long time, Jack Churchill."

"All my life. That may be a long time for you. But I've only known you for a few months and then we've only been together for-what? — an hour or more? That's not enough time for me to fall in love with anyone. I don't believe in love at first-"

She turned her face from him so he couldn't see what lay there.

He hadn't the heart to finish. "I don't hold it against you, Niamh. What you did was wrong, but I wasn't fair to you either. I shouldn't have promised something I couldn't live up to."

She turned back to him in surprise, quickly checking that it was not a cruel joke before smiling shyly. "It seems that for all I know you, I do not know you."

"We've both got a lot to learn about each other."

"May we try to be friends?"

"Of course. But don't think about anything more than that. I don't know you, I don't really know myself any more, everything's in such upheaval. It would be wrong to expect anything to happen."

"I understand," she said seriously. "But to be friends-" Her smile lit up her face.

"It's all right to lose your heart, but never lose your head." The words popped into his head, from a lifetime away, a happier time, but oddly, he didn't feel despondent. Niamh looked at him curiously. "Just a line from an old song," he explained. "I'm glad we're going to get on fine. This could be a difficult journey for all of us." He took a long draught of the water, which tasted like no water he had ever had before: vibrant, refreshing, infused with complex tastes. He savoured it for a moment, then said, "Tell me, the Golden Ones have a strange relationship with time. The past, the future… you don't see it how we see it. How are things going to work out? Not for me-I don't want to know thatbut for the world, my world? Is all this for nothing?"

"Nothing is ever for nothing." The words had an odd resonance in her mouth. "There is meaning in even the most mundane act."

"The fall of a sparrow."

"Yes. The slightest act. A pebble dropped in water. Ripples run out, bounce back, and then out again. You might not be able to see the results from your perspective, but if your actions are taken with good heart, they will be magnified."

"I'm getting the feeling you're not going to answer my question."

"You Fragile Creatures have a limited view of the turning of the Great Plan. Until your abilities advance it would be unwise to provide you with a glimpse of our vista."

"That's patronising. You're saying we're not up to it."

"That is correct. You are not ready. It is the arrogance of all emerging species that they have an understanding of everything. True wisdom comes from accepting that nothing can be understood. All existence has a framework, but it is not clockwork, although at first glance it may look so. Consider this: from the clouds the coastline is a simple unbroken line. As you fall, you see the twists and turns, the tiny inlets, the craggy outcroppings that comprise its complex shape. You fall to the beach and you see a billion, billion grains of sand, and suddenly there is no shape at all, simply chaos making an illusion of a complex pattern."

"And so it continues. Yes, I understand that-"

"But the chaos is ordered." She smiled enigmatically. "You Fragile Creatures think you see the way everything works. You can measure the height and length and breadth of it, and in your arrogance-"

"Okay, okay, I get your point. We're just kids who haven't learnt how to draw pictures with perspective. So we have to learn to see before we can be shown the view. But-"

She shook her head.

He sighed. "I can see where Tom got it all from. Everything's just too complex to sum up with words."

"Yes," she said. "It is."

"So I just do my best, and be damned."

"Or not." She took his hand briefly, then pulled away, as if she had overstepped some invisible boundary. "Everything we need to know is encoded within. Everything. But you have to be strong to trust yourself. It is easier to be a child and let others tell you this and that. That is the key to all wisdom: listen to no one. Trust what your heart tells you."

For the next ten minutes they sat in silence while Church mulled over her words. She had made exactly the same point as Ruth. It might have been coincidence, but Tom had told him so many times that what he thought was coincidence was the universe contacting him. But what was he supposed to take from it?

High overhead the owl soared on the thermals rising from the waves. It had moved along effortlessly when the ship had slipped between the worlds, though now it looked bigger than Ruth recalled, and she was sure she could see its eyes glinting golden in the sun; more than an owl. But then it always had been. In Otherworld it was simply one step closer to its true nature, Ruth imagined. She shivered, despite the heat, recalling all the things it had whispered to her in the miserable dark when she had been a prisoner of the Fomorii: secret knowledge that had transformed her into something else, while at the same time terrifying her. She was afraid she was losing part of herself in the process; her innocence, certainly. Sometimes she even feared for her sanity.