Charles Butler - The Fetch of Mardy Watt

Weary traveller take your ease

Lay down the burden that you carry ,

It is compact of foolish cares

Then stay and by this fountain tarry .

Life’s a race not won by hurry

Chasing every flattering breeze

Let Fortune brag and Care be sorry

Weary traveller take your ease .

Near the bottom of the plaque a cherub puffed his cheeks and blew. A green copper pipe projected from his mouth like a pea-shooter and there was a pump handle.

“Don’t look so surprised,” said Rachel. “It’s been there all the time, you know.”

Mardy was quite certain that it had not, but she did not wish to provoke another of Rachel’s snorts by protesting. She noticed, however, as she and Rachel moved the few paces to the horse trough, that the curtain of yellow air Rachel had created followed them obediently, smudging the light as it came and blocking the far end of the street from view.

The trough was empty, but Rachel began working the pump at once. At first, she produced nothing but a hollow clanking, alarmingly loud in the empty street. Then the clank got mixed up with a deep-throated gargle, the gargle progressed into a gloop and finally a stream of rather murky water spilled from the pipe. Filling the trough took some time, but long before Rachel had stopped pumping it was obvious that water in Uraniborg was not what Mardy was used to. As it rippled and spun at the bottom of the trough, mixing with dust and moss and fragments of twig, it also found time to glisten. It was thicker than ordinary water, with a metallic look to its surface, and somehow sluggish. What was strangest, amidst the scum and bubbles Mardy sometimes thought she caught a reflection of people or places quite unknown to her. A circle of women chanting in a forest clearing. The inside of a bedouin tent. A venerable Chinese face, frowning intently and just on the point of speech. Then the water would eddy and slide to a new angle.

“That should be enough,” said Rachel at last. She sounded out of breath from all that pumping. She stood beside Mardy, waiting for the water to settle. In her hand was a pin. When the water was still, she took Mardy’s finger quickly and-

“Ouch!”

“Don’t be a baby. I only need a drop.”

Rachel had pricked the very tip of Mardy’s index finger. Now she was holding the finger over the trough, squeezing out a cherry-red bead of blood. Mardy seemed unable to do anything but submit and watch as if it were all happening to another person – though the pain in her finger was sharp enough.

“The pin’s silver – the only substance that will pass freely between the Mayor’s world and your own.”

“It still hurts!”

“The blood will earth you,” Rachel explained. “We must show the spirit the way to its lodging.”

She let the pin fall. As it hit the water it ripped a hole in its surface, like a bullet tearing through cloth. Through the hole Mardy saw things moving. Very small things, it seemed – or perhaps just a long way down. She was looking at the world from the bottom of a cloud. She blinked.

“That’s – here ! Bellevue Road! I can see the trees, and people walking about in the snow, and—”

“Yes?”

“And me,” Mardy added weakly. “Only it can’t be…”

It was. Mardy saw herself plodding up the road from Hal’s house, her shoulder bag swaying to left and right as she hugged herself against the cold.

“You are there,” said Rachel. “In body, I mean. If one of your friends came along now and spoke to you, you’d smile and say hello and do all the things people do when they pass the time of day. And perhaps they’d never guess your immortal spirit was here in Uraniborg. Unless they looked into your eyes …’

“Just stop it!” shouted Mardy. “This is getting too weird for me. No one can be in two places at once.”

“Calm yourself,” said Rachel soothingly, and she laid a hand gently on Mardy’s arm. Perhaps she was trying to be kind, but Mardy knew that part of Rachel was enjoying herself thoroughly. Rachel could not quite keep a sneer out of her voice as she added: “Whoever said Uraniborg was a place ? It’s a way of being, that’s all. A way of living in spirit.”

“It looks like a place.”

“Because you’re used to three dimensions,” said Rachel condescendingly, as if that were a common shortcoming. “You see it all that way, of course. You don’t know any better.”

“But whatever it is, I still don’t know why I’m here. Maybe you like it – if you’re a witch like you say.”

“Like you wrote !”

“I did not – I’ve told you! And what’s more,” Mardy added quickly, seeing Rachel about to interrupt again, “I don’t know anything about witches, and I’ve never seen a ghost, and I think Halloween is an advertising racket. I don’t like adventures, understand? And I’ve had enough of you treating me like some puzzle you’ve got to solve, Rachel Fludd.”

“Shh! Don’t say my name out loud. The Mayor’s got ears as well as eyes. Sharp, sharp!”

“There’s no need to twist my hand! I promise I won’t say your precious name again. Just tell me what’s happening.”

Rachel gave her a long, hard look. “It’s quite simple. It’s the Mayor. He wants your soul, to slave for him up there.” She gestured cautiously through the air-curtain, towards the tower behind it. “And if you’re already visiting Uraniborg, he’s well on his way to getting it.”

“Who’s this Mayor you keep talking about?” demanded Mardy. The bit about slaves sounded too alarming. “Is he Count Frankenstein or something?”

“You don’t think I know his name, do you?” exclaimed Rachel. “He’s – well, he’s a very strong enchanter, that’s all. He’s old, you see, and clever, and he knows all the Harmonic Combinations – he’s had a long time to learn them. Spells of binding and releasing, summoning and breaking – he probably knows more about them than anyone except the Artemisians themselves. And he’s got hundreds of spirits waiting on him and spying for him. There’s no hiding for long.” She added, a little resentfully: “He doesn’t like us Artemisians at all.”

“I see,” said Mardy, who didn’t, of course – but just now she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Except the most important thing and it took her a little time to summon the nerve to ask it. “These slaves. How does he get them?”

“By calculating their Reverberant Chord, usually. Everyone has one – unique, like a fingerprint – but it needs a great enchanter to work it out. Have you heard any strange music recently?” Rachel asked in a serious and methodical way. “String music – strings being plucked?”

Mardy thought immediately of the War Memorial and the thought-deadening music she had heard there. How it had seemed to pluck at her and shake the soul out of her body like a coin out of a piggy bank. “Yesterday – after school. I think I may have seen the Mayor, too.”

“His face?” asked Rachel excitedly.

“Just the back of him, as he was walking away. He had some kind of instrument in a case. Anyway, since then – things have happened to me. Odd things…”

Mardy told Rachel about her conversation with Mrs Hobson that morning and the intruder in her room. “I keep thinking I’ve got a double following me about.”

Rachel nodded. “That’s likely enough. A Fetch. Like the one we just saw. It’s a copy of you, made when the Mayor played the Reverberant Chord. Right now he’ll be nursing it up, getting it ready to take your place.”

“Take my place?” echoed Mardy.

“That’s the idea. You wane, it waxes. It’s not a straightforward process, mind. You’ll probably find it fades in and out for a while. But make no mistake, in the end the Fetch will be Mardy Watt and you’ll be a slave for ever here in Uraniborg. And none of your friends or family will know that anything’s changed.”