Catherine Fisher - Corbenic

It was holiday time and Bath was busy. Down in the town they found a small café full of American tourists and squeezed into a table at the back. Shadow ordered pizza and chips and Cokes and Cal said bleakly, “I haven’t got any money.”

She put a credit card on the table. “Daddy can pay.”

“Shadow . . .”

“Forget it. What did Trevor have to say?”

Cal sighed. The conversation had not been pleasant. “He was furious. Where had I been? Didn’t I know Thérèse was worried stiff? Didn’t I know the police in three counties were out looking for me?”

She nodded. “Sounds familiar. And when he’d calmed down?”

Cal drank the Coke. “Said the job was still there if I wanted it.”

“Do you?”

He gazed out at the packed streets. Then he said, “I used to dream, at home. All I ever wanted was somewhere clean, quiet. Everywhere I went I’d look at the big houses and be sick with envy of the kids who came out of them. I still am. I can’t just turn that off. And that takes money.”

Shadow waited till the waitress had put the plates down and gone. Then she said, “So that’s a no, then.”

He looked up at her, a sudden grin. “I suppose it is.”

“Sophie?”

She looked up, alert. Then said, “Hi, Marcus. Cal, this is Marcus. I told you about him.”

He was big, blond, expensive. Public school, by the voice. His sunglasses would have cost a few days’ salary. Cal stood up, found he was taller and enjoyed that. “Hi,” he said quietly.

Marcus looked at him, then at Shadow. “Thought we might go out somewhere tonight, if you’re interested. But. . .” he shrugged, “no bother.”

She smiled sweetly. “Maybe another time.”

“Fine.” He went, looking back once. Cal sat back down and glanced at Shadow. She laughed softly. “Perfect,” she said.

Afterward they went shopping, Shadow buying a strange hand-painted T-shirt for herself, and a sweater for him, even though he told her not to. Such casual spending appalled and thrilled him. It was like another world.

In the Body Shop he lounged while she picked over various shampoos, leaning against the green-painted counter idly. Then his gaze froze.

Leo was looking in through the window. The big man was watching Cal; as soon as he saw Cal notice him he turned and was gone in the flood of pedestrians. Cal yelled, “Shadow!” and raced out.

People buffeted him. He pushed through them, turned right up Milsom Street and ran, jumping impatiently out into the road where cars hooted. Up ahead Leo’s huge back was clear. He crossed into an alley. Just behind, Cal sprinted between vans, dodged a stroller, threw himself around the corner. “Hey! WAIT!”

The man turned. He was a total stranger.

Cal’s breath almost choked him.

Behind him, Shadow turned the corner, breathing hard. “Cal! Who was it?”

He looked around at the totally ordinary town, then at her face, the hidden concern. He rubbed his hair with a shaky hand. “I think it’s me, isn’t it?” he whispered.

You had to pay for deckchairs in the park. It was like you had to pay for everything in the world. Devastated, he sat there and knew he had imagined it all. Unless he could find Corbenic again. Unless he could find the Grail.

They both sat silent in the sun until she said, “Look, Cal . . .”

He sat up, interrupting. “I’m going to Glastonbury. Will you come with me?”

“Why there?”

“Merlin said in all the stories the Grail is there.”

“Merlin’s mad. I mean,” she said hastily, “he may be right about that, but this place you found . . . this hotel, was up north. Right?”

Suspicious, he looked at her. The truth came to him, blinding and brilliant as the flashing rainbows in the bedroom. “You don’t believe any of it. The bleeding spear, the Grail . . .”

“I think you stayed the night at some hotel. That you saw some . . . people carrying things. It must have been a bit odd.”

“A bit odd!” Aghast, he stood up and stared down at her. “I thought you at least would understand.”

Shadow bit a nail. “It’s like Hawk. He thought he was someone from the past. They all had this game, that they were immortals. I never knew if they were winding me up. Then I thought, they believe this. So I believed it. If you believe something hard enough, it comes true. In a way. What he said to you about the Grail is just another old story.”

He came and sat down. “You think I’m going the way my mother did.”

“I think you’re looking for something that’s not here. Maybe you’re looking for her. You won’t find her in Glastonbury.” It was cruel, he thought bitterly, and maybe Shadow thought so too, because she said quietly, “I never knew her, remember.”

Out of his anger he shrugged. “I often thought I’d like to tell you. Have someone to moan about it to.”

“Tell me now,” she said gently.

He didn’t know where to start. There was too much. The dirt, the drink, the time she’d come at him with the broken bottle. So he said, “Once, she cut herself.”

“What?”

“I’d come home late, and she’d cut herself. With the kitchen knife. Long, red slashes, on her arms. Blood everywhere, on her sleeves, the sofa, everywhere.”

Shadow was rigid. “What did you do?”

“Freaked out. Panicked. Mopped up. Got her to Casualty—God, we lived in that place. Locked up the knives. Lived with it, the terror of it happening again, rocked myself to sleep. Never told anyone.” He looked up, stricken. “There’s all that in me, Shadow, and I can’t get it out. And I swore to her I’d be back for Christmas, I swore I would and I didn’t go, and I knew, I knew what she might do! Don’t you see, I can’t live with that! I can’t!”

He was shaking. His voice was broken up. “I’ve coped, always coped. Made rules. Never admitted . . . But now I’m lost, Shadow. I’m in pieces. There’s nothing left.” He was sobbing at last.

Shadow put her arms around him and held him tight and they sat together in the sunlight for a long time till he was calm, kids on skateboards going up and down the path in front of them, wheeling, their voices high in the bright air. Finally, confused, he rubbed his face and pulled away and said, “You didn’t answer my question about Glastonbury.”

“I can’t come, Cal. I have to stay here now, and that’s your fault. I promised I’d finish my exams and I will. I don’t think you should go either, not on your own.”

“I’m not . . .”

She turned to him. “Look. Stay a few days. Think about it. You’ll feel better.” She sounded choked. Then she lay back in the striped deckchair and closed her eyes against the ripple from the river. “There are two sorts of life, aren’t there? The one that seems ordinary, like this, and then the reflection from it. Curved, shiny. All mixed up.”

He should have known. Leaning over the mahogany banister that night he heard her voice, low and urgent. “He’s not right. He’s been sleeping rough for three months and can’t remember any of it. And now this nonsense about Glastonbury. Yes, but he needs to be home!”

Maybe Hawk said something; she laughed, low, but she wasn’t amused. Then she said, “Tomorrow. First thing. I don’t know what to do, Hawk. Just get here.”

Back upstairs, he waited, watching his own gaunt face in the mirror. When she had gone to bed he sat there still, hearing the clock chime in the hall below, the slow cars in the street, the laughter of late-night drinkers. When he finally moved he was stiff; but he picked up the rucksack and went downstairs silently, and let himself out and walked down the long broad street without looking back.

Next morning, on the bus crossing the high plateau of Mendip, he thought of Merlin, because this was not how quests were achieved, not how the soul was saved, not squashed beside a fat woman with shopping bags and behind a kid defiantly smoking under a NO SMOKING sign. But he knew that unless he found Corbenic he would be lost, he could not move on. He would spend his life in regrets. He had caused his mother’s death, he had lied to the Company and betrayed Shadow back into the life she detested, and there was nothing he could do about any of that. But Bron was left. He might still be able to tell Bron he’d been wrong. And if Bron was real then he was not going mad.