The Illusionists (16 page)

Frith turned, heart pounding.

In between two trees stood a woman. He guessed in her sixties or seventies, round of body, with masses of dark hair caught up in a fat messy bun and a cutting gaze. From one arm dangled a lidded basket and her cloak was fastened tight around her neck. She was obviously wet through and should have looked bedraggled, but somehow she didn't.

There was something about her eyes.

‘I know you,' he said. But his voice wavered with uncertainty. He was pretty sure he'd never been the uncertain sort before his memory loss, which was probably why he hated the feeling so very much.

The woman said nothing, but her face changed.

She's surprised. Now she's suspicious.

She knows me, too.

‘What are you doing here?' she repeated. ‘Has something happened to Rue?'

Rue. The Penhallow hedgewitch's apprentice girl that he'd apparently recruited for this Talent programme he was supposed to be running.

‘Are you  …  Are you Zelle Penhallow?' he said, not quite daring to believe his luck.

‘What's wrong with you?'

He held up his hands. ‘This may sound strange, but I've lost my memory. Something happened to me, and I have selective amnesia. Please  …  you're her, aren't you?'

The woman watched him. ‘I don't like lies,' she said flatly. ‘And I don't like games. And you was always so very good at both, Mussyer Frith. What's this game you're playing now?'

And she doesn't like me.

Frith held himself back. This had to be carefully played.

‘I need to talk to you,' he said. ‘If you're her. Just a minute or two of your time.'

‘The last time you took a minute or two of my time I lost Rue to you,' she said. ‘And the time before that I lost my son. So you'll forgive me if I ain't happy about doing it again.'

Frith shook his head, desperate. ‘I don't know what to say. I don't remember those things. I really don't. I'm sorry if I've hurt you in the past. But I need your help. Please.'

The woman gazed at him for a long moment as the rain pattered around them. He felt speared to the tree behind him, opened up and examined like a frog under those eyes.

‘Sorry, Mussyer Frith,' she said, finally. ‘But I don't want to help you.'

She turned and walked away, squelching over the forest floor.

‘I need something removed,' said White into the keyhole.

‘What?'

He hesitated, glancing around. It was early evening and the Border City street this grand little townhouse sat on was quiet enough, but this was not a normal request he was making, and the man on the other side of the door not quite a normal doctor.

‘An implant,' he said.

Silence.

He had left Fernie over a day ago – it had taken that long to travel up to Border City, first by several different trains, and then coach. He'd never been this far north before, and couldn't Jump somewhere he'd never visited, or at least not consciously. Not yet. It had only served to remind him how lucky he was that he could Jump at all. Having to use public transport was risky, if people were looking for him – but more than that, it was just so tediously godsdamned slow.

‘How did you find me, please?' said the voice through the door.

‘Someone gave me your name and address a long time ago.'

‘You will give me the name of this person, please.'

‘De Forde Say Frith.' As White said his name, his stomach dropped to the ground. If the man needed him to be vouched for by Frith somehow, he was screwed.

But then the door clicked as the key was turned on the other side, and then White was shuffling into a narrow hallway.

The man before him scrutinised White keenly. He was short and round, with a balding head and pleasant features.

‘If they come from Frith, I do them for free,' he said.

White was silent. Frith had said as much when he'd given White the doctor's name, not that long after recruiting him.

So much had happened since then.

‘Come into the office and let's have a chat.'

He led White down the corridor and into the room at the end. It was small, the walls violently decorated with a mishmash of paintings and words and impossible colours.

The doctor sat behind a polished trewsey wood desk. He noticed White staring at the walls and smiled. ‘One of my eccentricities,' he said. ‘I do miss it still, you see.'

‘Miss what?'

‘Life.'

White studied him. ‘You are a Worlder.'

‘Not any more. Got my Angle Tarain citizenship a few years ago. Now,' he said, and steepled his fingers, ‘you wish to have your implant removed.'

‘Yes,' said White, but maybe there had been something in his voice, because the doctor raised a brow.

‘You understand what you're doing, don't you? I apologise if I seem patronising, but if you change your mind afterwards and want another implant, there are places in World – illegal, rather unwholesome places – but it will be much more painful an operation and the new implant will never be as fully immersive as the one you have now.'

‘I understand.'

‘Well, I don't know what you've heard about it already, but it's actually a fairly simple procedure. Have you been living without Life for a year yet? I generally say a year before I'll even consider removal.'

‘Longer,' said White. ‘I have been in Angle Tar a while. I was given your name when I first arrived here, but I did not think –' He paused, trying to understand it. ‘I suppose a small part of me thought, somehow, that it was too far a step to take.'

‘Of course,' said the doctor, with some sympathy. ‘So now you've decided to remain in Angle Tar permanently?'

‘No,' said White. Rue flashed in his mind. ‘I wish to have my implant removed because I am going back to World.'

Rue sat on Livie's spare bed, hugging her knees, and stared at the wall opposite.

Now, in the night, when everything was dark and still, and everyone else was asleep. When it was all so real. Morning brought light and clatter and breakfast and music, and things that pushed the dark away. In the morning she might not understand any more.

Now. Now to think about what it all meant.

I'm you from the future.

The voice echoed in her head.

The things the Ghost Girl had shown her. Her memories, played out in Castle rooms, room after room, her secrets, watching her own body and voice act out a play she remembered from inside her head. So many things that no one else could possibly know about her. Little things she barely remembered. Big things she couldn't forget. But then other things, too – memories that had never happened to her, but had clearly happened to the Ghost Girl.

At some point, the girl said, they had begun to diverge. Lead different lives. It was on purpose, she said. She had come back, through the Castle, to change their past.

‘But,' said Rue, still struggling with the enormity of the truth. ‘But I don't  …  If you're me, what happened in
your
future? And how could you possibly change the future? That's not  …  You can't do that.'

‘Through the Castle you can,' said the girl as she looked out across the corridor they sat in. ‘I can pull people here from my past. Only ever people I know, though. It's like the Castle is a mirror of your mind; you can only find things in it that relate to you. You've seen the rooms. If you can find the right room with the right person in, you can pull the real person right here, through their dreams, at the point in their life that the room shows you. And, hopefully, I can get them to do things differently. I just have to persuade them. I have to make them see.'

‘See what?'

‘What's going to happen if they don't change things.'

‘So what's going to happen?'

The girl was silent. Rue began to be afraid that she wouldn't say.

But then the girl looked at her. The scribbly eyes searched her face. ‘You don't want to hear this,' she said. ‘Just remember that I said that. That I warned you.'

‘But you'll tell me anyway.'

The girl's mouth twisted, a bitter line. ‘I'm you. You're me. We might have different pasts now, but I know you. You won't ever stop wanting to know the truth.'

Rue was silent.

‘Things were different for me,' said the girl. ‘For a start, Wren never went away from White. When I started at the university, they were already great friends. Best friends. Everyone knew of Wren and White – they were inseparable. And that was the problem.'

The girl looked down at her hands as she talked.

‘But I knew if they fell out, it would give me a chance to separate them. So I started to pull Wren here, when he was younger. Maybe  …  a year or two ago, now, in your time. We just talked, the first couple of times. He told me things about himself. He was curious about World. He longed for it. I think that's what binds the Talented more than anything else. We all want to explore. We want it so much we've somehow managed to make it so we can, without the inconvenience of physics.'

Gods, that's right,
thought Rue.
That's it exactly.

‘So I told him I could get him to World. I could find people to look after him. All he had to do was leave. But he was reluctant, at first. Because of  …  because of White. It didn't take much, though.'

Rue narrowed her eyes. ‘What does that mean? What did you do?'

‘Just  …  pushed him a bit. Told him some things about White.'

‘What kind of things?'

‘Bad things, okay?' she snapped. ‘It's not like it took much. Wren was already jealous and paranoid. Look, they needed to be separated! It all goes wrong from there, in my version. Their friendship. That's where it starts.'

She leaned back against the corridor wall. Rue saw her visibly swallow.

‘You have no idea how powerful they are together,' she said. ‘And then I came along. I tried to stop them, in the end. I really did. I started to realise what it would all mean. They were the two most Talented people in the world. No one else could have done it. I'm not even sure they could have managed it separately. But
together
 … '

‘What did they do?' said Rue.

‘They worked out how to open the Castle.'

Rue felt her skin fur as her hair stood on end, delicately rising.

You don't want to ask, but you have to. You have to, Rue.

‘What happens when the Castle is opened?' she said.

The Ghost Girl sat for a long time. Then, finally, her mouth opened and the words fell out like heavy stones.

‘Monsters,' she said. ‘Monsters come. The ones that live here. They break out into the real world. And everyone dies.'

Rue stared at her. ‘How?' she said at last.

‘They use us as vehicles. Once the Castle is opened, anyone who comes here through their dreams, consciously or not, can be possessed by one of them. And so they come flooding out. Taking hold of us. What they like most of all is to kill things. We thought people were going mad, at first. People who'd never harmed a thing in their lives suddenly turning into murderers. But it's them, inside us. And you can imagine what starts to happen once people in positions of power are taken over.'

‘Is that  …  Is that what's happening to you right now? In your future?'

‘It's already happened. There aren't  …  There aren't many of us left. I tried to stop it. I tried.'

Her voice had faded to a scratching whisper.

‘What happened to White and Wren?' said Rue. A horrible suspicion began to grow.

The girl shook her head.

Rue stared at her in horror.

‘No,' she said. ‘He dies? White. Tell me.
Does he die?
'

The girl said nothing.

Rue felt her heart try and crawl its way up her throat.

‘That's what you're trying to do,' she said. ‘You're trying to make it so he never died.'

‘I'm trying to make it so no one has to die.'

‘Yes. But most of all you're trying to make it so
he
doesn't.'

The girl didn't correct her. How hard it was to keep the truth from yourself, when yourself was telling it to you. There was no escape from that.

Selfish
, thought Rue.
She's so selfish.

That means I am, too.

‘So, what?' said Rue out loud, her voice colder. ‘You've been pulling people here, manipulating them. Telling them things that aren't true. Messing with them. What have you done to try and get him back?'

The girl scoffed. ‘You make me sound like I'm some sort of master controller, everyone dancing to my tune.'

‘Aren't they?'

‘Do you know how hard it is in this place? Do you think I can just easily find a room that gives me the
right
person, in the
right
time I need? Do you know what it's like to hold different futures and pasts in your head at once, and try to decide which one will give you the outcome you want? And then work out a way to get to a room that will give you a point in the right person's timeline, and pull them here to try to make them do something that
might,
just
might,
affect the future? All the while knowing that each visit you can't take too long, you have to hurry hurry
hurry,
that you're forever under a ticking clock, because it's only a matter of time before the monsters come and find you?'

Tears had started to slip from her eyes. She didn't even seem to notice.

‘I set up the Talent programme. I visited people in World and persuaded them to do it. I visited Frith in Angle Tar and persuaded him, too. I did it to find White and Wren. How could I make sure they were separated if I didn't even know where they were? Because I can't
do
anything from here. I can't change anything myself. All I can do is sit in the Castle, pulling people in, talking at them, hoping they might believe me, they might do something
for
me. Pulling random strings every so often, hoping against hope that the string I'm pulling is doing something useful and not just – oh, I don't know – killing everyone in the world or screwing up my past so much that I don't even know which version of me is me any more. I'm terrified of changing things so much that maybe White stops existing any more, or maybe even me. Or maybe we never meet. Do you understand how carefully I have to tread at the same time as having no idea what I'm doing? Do you know what that feels like?'

She subsided, staring into nothing. ‘The only way I know if I'm having any effect at all is by going back into the real world, your future real world, to see if everyone's still dead or not.'

Rue shook her head rapidly. ‘I can't –' she faltered. ‘Oh gods. This is impossible. What you're trying to do is impossible.'

‘Yes.'

‘And you've been trying to do it alone all this time.'

Her thin shoulders shrugged, but there was a whole wealth of emotion behind that shrug.

‘I could have helped you,' said Rue. ‘You could have come to me earlier.'

‘I had no idea what would happen if I pulled myself here. Can you imagine? I didn't realise you could come here too without both of us  …  dying or exploding or never existing or something. I had to concentrate on finding White and Wren. There's just not enough time each visit.'

She laughed. ‘Not that time means anything here,' she said.

She didn't look like Rue. There was nothing about her that felt like gazing into a mirror. But would anyone recognise themselves if they met another them in disguise? Everyone had the version of themselves they carried around. Was it the true one? Was there such a thing?

‘How long have you been coming here? I mean, to try to change the past?' said Rue.

‘I told you. Time doesn't really have meaning here.'

‘But how long for you, in the real?'

She shrugged. ‘A few weeks.'

Only weeks. Yet she had affected years' worth of Rue's time. Getting Frith to set up the programme. Having a young White recruited, and a young Wren. Then a few years later, persuading Wren to leave Angle Tar. All those little nudges and shifts.

What would weeks' worth of wandering around the Castle's hallways and rooms do to someone?

‘How can you spend so long here?' said Rue. ‘Those things. They come for you, don't they?'

‘Every time, eventually.'

‘What are they?' she half whispered.

‘I don't know. But I think we give them shape. I told you that the Castle is a reflection of our own minds, well  …  I think they are, too. Who knows what they look like when we're not here? I'm not sure they have a true form. They're in-between creatures, just like the Castle is an in-between place.'

‘What are you saying? They exist because of us?'

‘Maybe. We're like beacons to them. They like to eat us, but what they want most of all is to leave the Castle. Become flesh. They desire the real world. You should see them, out there right now.' Her shoulders twitched in a shudder. ‘They love it. Running around, killing. They don't get much chance to do that penned up in here, but when we opened the Castle we gave them a whole world to eat.'

Rue felt her skin crawl.

The girl was gazing out across the corridor.

‘One day I just won't be fast enough, you know?' she said. ‘The more time you spend here, the more you'll understand. You start to  …  want it, somehow. You just stand there and wait for them to come. You have a tiny thought in the back of your mind that wonders what it would be like to just  …  let it happen.'

Rue stared at her. ‘That's called suicide.'

The girl didn't reply.

An awful thought struck Rue.

‘If you died,' she said, ‘would I stop existing, too?'

‘Yes. But  …  I don't really know.'

‘But can the past me exist without the future me? I mean, there's two of us, right here, right now  … '

‘The more you try to understand,' said the Ghost Girl, ‘the less sense it makes. All I know, all I let myself think about, is that I can change the past from here. One decision at a time. I change my past to change my present. You being able to come here  …  you talking to me like this  … ' She laughed, a shocked little pant. ‘I had no idea it was even possible. Even now I feel like I've made it up. I'm at the end of my rope. I've got no options left. I don't know what else to do. So maybe my mind has made you up to comfort me. Maybe I'm sitting here, talking to myself.'

‘Well  …  you are.'

The Ghost Girl snorted.

‘But', said Rue, ‘you
have
changed your past, haven't you? I mean. You separated White and Wren. So they can't open the Castle now.'

She shook her head. ‘It's still open. Every time I go back into the real, I mean  …  Some things have changed, a little. But not much. Everyone's still dead. I haven't stopped it. Somehow, they'll still open the Castle.'

‘Can't you find a way to close it?'

‘Aren't you listening? It's too late for that. Closing it now still means they're dead. I have to change the past so they're still alive. So that it was
never opened
.'

Rue tried to think.

‘What if we make it so they can definitely never meet again?'

‘And how would we manage that?'

Rue swallowed. ‘I s'pose you've thought of the obvious.'

The Ghost Girl raised her eyes to Rue's and her voice was calm.

‘Kill one of them?' she said.

‘No!' said Rue. ‘Just  …  just Wren.'