Advent (42 page)

 
He reached out and grabbed her shoulders. The babbling and shivering stopped at once, as though he’d silenced a struck bell. She drew in a long, gasping, wordless breath, coming up for air. She opened her eyes.

 
In the sudden silence something rustled among the bushes of Hester’s garden behind, some night animal.

 
She relaxed.

 
They looked at each other, Miss Grey and her ward.

 
‘There it is,’ she said, with a kind of smile.

 
‘What?’

 
‘My death.’

 
Light erupted behind him. As he spun round he heard a deep and unspeakably malevolent growl and saw a spray of cold fire. The sky filled with screeching shadows as roosting crows took sudden flight. Gav’s knees gave way, terror dropped him to the ground, and as the billow of flame faded he saw in the road outside Hester’s house the lean face of a huge black dog, crouching keenly, its fanged mouth dripping burning gobbets. In its breath was the undersong of the hunting mask,
Kill
kill
kill
. He stumbled to his feet. Miss Grey stood just as she had, perfectly unmoving. He looked to her frantically for help and knew that she was no help at all. She’d never been any help. The beast padded toward them, a brutish rumble coming from behind its clenched jaws. Liquid flame puddled on the asphalt behind it. Gav edged away. The dog swung its massive black head and fixed its eyes on him. They were burning too, smouldering with feral malice. His legs trembled; the air turned to ice in his lungs; it was all he could do not to collapse in a heap.

 
The horrific gaze released him, turning deliberately away.

 
It fixed on Miss Grey.

 
The black dog twisted back its head and howled. Fire spurted again from its throat. Gav threw his hands up to his face. It came slowly forward, towards her.

 
She looked pathetically tiny. She stood before it as if paralysed, as if already dead.

 
‘No,’ Gav whispered.

 
Its claws raked against the road. The head lowered, fanged mouth parting, trickling oily flame as it approached her. Still Miss Grey did not move.

 
‘No,’ he said, louder. ‘No.’

 
A ripple ran over its black flanks. Its muscles bunched. It halted. Its head swivelled round to him. There were still runnels of fire in its mouth, red-gold saliva. Oh shit, Gav thought, that was stupid, suicidally stupid, but it was done. He met its gaze. I’m going to die now, he decided. The realisation seemed more weird than tragic. Let’s get it over with.

 
The dog appeared to swallow uncomfortably. Its mouth opened, its tongue stiffened, and it spat out a strange, hollow bark.

 
Gav was so amazed at not yet being ripped to shreds that he became reckless with terror. ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘Stop. Clear off.’

 
The quiver ran through it again. It shook its head as if in pain, and its tail dropped between its legs. Gav stood straighter. His knees wobbled ridiculously, as if he was a toddler, but he hadn’t collapsed, he hadn’t fallen, he wasn’t dead. He took a deep breath and made himself speak clearly and firmly, the way you were supposed to talk to dogs. ‘Get out of it.’ Insane bravado made him shout louder. ‘Piss off. Go on.’

 
It twisted round and ran away into the dark.

 
He stared after it. He couldn’t feel his hands or feet or his heartbeat. Trickles of sweat turned icy on the back of his neck.

 
‘That was well done, Gawain,’ Miss Grey said.

 
Breathing hard, his fists slowly unclenching, he swivelled round to her. There might have been the faintest of smiles on her shadowed face.

 
‘I . . .’

 
‘Don’t forget me,’ she whispered. She touched her fingers to her lips. ‘No one else will remember. You only.’

 
‘I . . . What?’ he said. ‘No. Never.’

 
‘You were always a kind child. It was you I loved. Goodbye.’

 
‘Hey.’ But she was suddenly swift. Her cloak floated out without a sound, she stepped out of the pool of light, and the shadows began rubbing away at her as she walked down the lane towards the dark. ‘No. Wait.’ Gav was too astonished to react. Hadn’t he just driven away her death? He’d saved her. Now she wouldn’t have to leave him after all. No goodbyes. They could go back to how it was when he was little and she was his best and only friend. He’d never wish her away again, never.

 
‘Wait!’ The darkness welcomed her amazingly quickly, as it had swallowed the hideous dog. He darted down the lane after her, but already he couldn’t even see she was there, though he knew she must be. He’d always known she had to be there. Even when home was at its worst and he was shut in his bedroom crying face down into his pillow so no one would hear him, he’d known deep down that she was out there somewhere.

 
‘Wait!’ He ran out of the puddle of light and couldn’t see a thing. He blundered on in the dark and smacked into an invisible parked car, stubbing his naked toe hard on some lump of metal. He fell into the road, clutching his feet, screeching in pain.

 
‘Stop!’ he shouted desperately, when his breath came back. ‘Please!’

 
A light came on in an upstairs window.

 
‘Please.’ He stared out of the village, into the black. Nothing.

 
‘Don’t leave me alone,’ he said, barely louder than a breath.

 
The creak and slide of a window opening.

 
‘What the hell’s going on out there?’ shouted a man’s voice.

 
Gav hunched into a ball on the road, hugging his knees, gazing after her.

 
‘If I hear anything else, I’m calling the police! Do you understand? People are trying to sleep!’ The window banged shut crossly. A few moments later the light flicked off.

 
‘Please come back,’ he said, to the darkness.

 
When he’d been a little kid, he used to think she came as soon as he wanted her. If he was feeling particularly lonely or sad, or Mum and Dad were being particularly mean or unfair, it always seemed like she’d be there before long, looking up at his window with that face that was never cross, maybe pointing out something that would cheer him up: a cloud shaped like a dragon, a tiny winged brown boy perched on the garden fence. Part of the misery of growing up had been realising he couldn’t make her come and go any more than he could make it rain. She wouldn’t answer his call. She never came when he begged. He’d said all the words he would ever be able to say to her. He was shivering in a country lane in the middle of the night. That was all.

 
He looked back towards the streetlamp. The road was empty but for his shoes, sitting like wreckage in the glare. He stared at them for a long, long time. He kept thinking he was going to cry, but he didn’t. He felt hollow. A great many memories passed by in the darkness, things he’d tried not to think about for years because he’d been doing his best to forget Miss Grey.

 
The church bell struck, one dismal stroke. It sounded like a single word:
Come
.

 
‘Goodbye,’ he whispered, and touched his lips. They told him his fingers were freezing. His feet were freezing too.

 
You’re on your own now, he thought to himself. It’s all up to you, Gav.

 
Gawain.

 
It was something she’d left him with.

 
He tried saying it aloud, not much more than a whisper. ‘Gawain.’ He muttered it a few more times, to get into the habit. I’m someone else now, he thought. Gavin’s finished. He’s the one Mum and Dad used to say things to, all the stuff he now knew was rubbish.
You’re too old to make up this nonsense now, Gavin.

 
‘Gawain.’ It made him feel older, and more serious. A courtly name, and an old-fashioned one. It settled around him like a ceremonial garment. He straightened his back.

 
It was all he had to begin with. Still, it struck him as the right sort of beginning, now that he thought about it. It was like being knighted. Arise, Sir Gawain. Your destiny awaits, whatever it is. Go forth and . . .

 
What?

 
What would he do, now he was on his own?

 
He sat cross-legged on the tarmac, his toes tucked under his thighs, and thought, slowly and carefully, about everything that had happened to him since Miss Grey had found her terrible voice on the train. He didn’t try to believe it, or not believe. He made very sure not to try that trick Gavin had learned of putting his head down and letting it pass, clamping the impervious mask on his face and waiting for it all to go away.

 
Then he thought, just as slowly and just as carefully, about everything she’d said to him. This time he didn’t let himself dismiss it as nonsense, the way Gavin would have. There was no more Gavin. Gavin was finished.

 
He sat quietly, letting the words echo around inside.
My burden . . . You must go and find it . . . An ocean girl tends it.
An ocean girl.
The words were all of Miss Grey he had left, so he held them close.

 
A cold while passed. He began to think he understood what Gawain had to do, who he had to find.

 
A dog barked, banishing the echoes. He jumped to his feet at once, scanning the night, heart drumming. He heard it again, somewhere off beyond the village, perhaps closer this time.

 
After a few seconds’ hesitation he trotted back to the streetlamp. He couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder every few steps. Nothing stirred. He picked up his shoes and socks, and made his way back into Hester’s house. There were no voices inside now. The room was so quiet he could hear Hester’s peaceful breathing through the ceiling.

 
He clicked the door shut, felt for the bolt in the dark and locked it.

 
But he knew Miss Grey had been talking about a different door. There’d be no closing that one behind him, not for him. Not for anyone.

Nineteen

The dead of
a winter night, before the dawn of another world.

 
Dressed all in black, a woman who was no woman leaned on a staff thicker than her wrist and looked out through a screen of stunted blackthorn towards the sea. She shuddered in the cold.

 
Behind her stood a thing like a misshapen shadow.

 
In the distance, around the curving bay, a hazy glow lit up the underside of heavy clouds. A lighthouse speared its intermittent brilliance across the water. There were other, smaller lights around a wide harbour mouth, navigation markers winking red and green and white. The woman surveyed this view silently.

 
When she eventually spoke, her voice grated strangely in her own mouth.

 
‘The stars have fallen.’

 
The edges of the shadow ruffled, as if it too were shivering.

 
‘These are the latter days,’ she continued, after a silence. It was not clear to whom she spoke, if anyone. Her gaze remained fixed across the bay.

 
‘Are the towns burning?’ she asked. ‘I see no smoke.’

 
‘No fire.’ It was the shadow that answered, in a voice even harsher than hers.

 
‘Then perhaps the mouth of hell gapes beneath the clouds there. Perhaps the harvest has begun.’