Advent (49 page)

 
He strolled down the overhung lane towards the river, rehearsing this conversation over and over again in his head, imagining what Marina would say.
I’m so sorry, Horace.
You were right all along.
I’m so glad you came to warn me, Horace.
You saved the day.

 
He heard a raised voice from somewhere down by the pub. He didn’t particularly want to run into anyone. If he was going to come up with some brilliant excuse later on, he didn’t want Mum finding out he’d been down here by the river. He ducked into the lane that led to the car park above the pub. From there he was high enough above the roofs of the holiday cottages to check out most of the beach. It looked safely deserted. The only thing moving was freaky Mr Frye’s boat.
Nymph
. What a gay name for a boat. Course he’s there, Horace thought, with a small inward sneer. Mr Freak. Goes out every day ’cos he’s crazy. Thinks he saw a mermaid once and keeps trying to catch it or something. Mental. He’d heard Mum talking about it.

 
Hang on. Someone sitting in the bow?

 
Horace shaded his eyes against the reflected brilliance of the water and peered. The small dinghy with its dirty white sail veered round, moving into open water beyond the moorings. The sail swung abeam, blocking his view of the front of the boat again.

 
No. Couldn’t be.

 
Could it?

 
He tried to tell himself he must have imagined it. It had only been for a second. Hard to see anything anyway, with the sun like that.

 
But now, as he skidded back down the wet grass and hurried out into the lane again, the awful logic of it loomed clearer and clearer. The professor was a headcase and she had something to do with it. Miss Clifton was basically OK, but definitely off the deep end, and she had something to do with it. And now that psycho Mr Frye.

 
A conspiracy. A conspiracy of freaks.

 
He ran down to where the lane opened out to the river. The boat was more than halfway across already. It was stern-on to him and he still couldn’t get a look at anything in front of the mast. There was a funny light in the sky too, an odd haze, as if someone had thrown the thinnest of veils over the morning.

 
The dinghy eased towards the opposite shore, heading for the ferry landing. It swung round to nestle against the stone steps. Now Horace could see that there really was a person squashed into the bows. The person stood up and climbed ashore. For a second or two, as he turned to say something to the man in the boat, his profile was clear to Horace’s keen eyes even at that distance.

 
Horace grabbed his bunch of keys from his pocket and sprinted across the beach.

Out of the corner of his eye Gav noticed a small dark figure running along the opposite shore, but he was too busy trying to figure out what to say to the man in the boat to give it any thought.

 
‘Well,’ he tried. ‘Thanks again.’ Not
Yes, she was really there.
Not
No, you didn’t imagine it.
Not
I know what it’s been like for you.
How did you even start to say things like that?

 
The bearded man swivelled himself forwards and made some adjustment to the sail. The wind was stiffening.

 
‘Nympholepsy,’ he said, as he fiddled around in the dinghy. He sounded out the syllables one by one.

 
‘Er . . . sorry?’

 
‘Nympholepsy. Word I heard a few years back. Judge told me that was my problem.’ The man looked up. ‘Know what it means?’

 
Gawain shook his head.

 
‘Dictionary definition: “A state of rapture, supposedly inspired in men by nymphs. Hence, a frenzy of emotion inspired by something unattainable.” I had to look it up. Dictionary don’t say if it’s curable.’ The current gradually pulled the boat away from the steps where Gawain stood. ‘Cost me my wife and kids, pretty much everything except
Nymph
here.’ He patted the gunwale in front of him. ‘Think I’ll ever see her again?’

 
He wants my help, Gav realised, finally. If I tell him yes, he’ll probably sail away happy. Gav could see all of this in an instant, written on the man’s obdurate look.

 
‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

 
The sailor turned away, blinking.

 
‘I’m sorry,’ Gawain said, to his back. Then, louder, as the sail filled and the dinghy leaned away, ‘Thanks!’

 
He didn’t want to see a grown man crying, so he started quickly up the steps. What was he supposed to say to everyone?
Hello, did you know there are fire-breathing dogs in the lanes and mermaids in the seas, but don’t ask me how or why or what we’re supposed to do about it, now have a nice day
?

 
But Marina spoke his language. Gawain hurried through the village, his eyes on the wooded slopes above. It couldn’t be that far to the ridge at the top, where the gate was. He saw a road curving uphill, but he didn’t want to take a route anyone else might be using if he could help it.

 
Just as he had that thought, someone came out of a tiny house right beside him. He looked down quickly to avoid any eye contact and saw that he wasn’t wearing his shoes.

 
Stupidly, he stared at his empty hands. He recalled tucking his shoes down in the bottom of the dinghy. He’d never picked them up again. How could he not have noticed? His feet were streaked with earth.

 
‘Good morning!’

 
He glanced up in confusion towards the elderly woman at her front door and saw her eyes travel down to his feet and up again. That look began to spread over her face. ‘Ah . . . chillier than they said it would be, isn’t it?’

 
‘A storm’s coming,’ he answered, and walked away. He had no idea what made him say it. Until the words had come out of his mouth he hadn’t known it was so.

 
But the morning was indeed darkening, and as he hurried between the motley windows and eaves he heard the valley behind the village beginning to hum to the music of a cold wind. He put his head down and trotted on. His bare feet seemed not to feel the pebbles of the road. He found a sign for a footpath leading straight up the valley behind the village, into the trees. The path was concrete at first, but as the houses shrank to tiny terraced cottages and then gave out altogether, it became packed mud, kneaded with old bootprints. Branches closed above it. He watched his feet as he walked. He knew he ought to be wondering how he was walking on the rough roots and loose stones without his shoes on, but there was no one to answer that question either.

 
He walked on, the old track beckoning him ahead like a bent arm, in among a faded tapestry of ferns and bark and the brittle rust of fallen leaves. He came to a junction marked by a wooden post. It seemed like a good excuse to sit on a flat stone and check the map, though the real reason he stopped was that as the light dimmed and the trees turned restless, he was suddenly in less of a hurry to get where he knew he had to go.

 
The map showed the footpath leading up through the wood towards a crossroads at the top of the ridge. The entrance to Pendurra was just a little east of where the roads met. Maybe a mile away, a mile and a half. He’d be there soon, very soon, and then . . .

 
A crackling in the undergrowth made him look up.

 
Something like a big animal was moving through the brambles and ferns. Gawain’s heart ballooned against his ribs. He’d thought he was completely alone. The shambling thing was the size of a bear.

 
He stood up, tipping the map off his knees into the mud.

 
It pushed its way through the trees until it showed itself to be a man, crouched and shaggy, matted with leaves, coated in earth. Gav picked up a length of fallen branch. His hands wouldn’t hold steady. Something Marina had said jumped from nowhere into his head. The thing that wasn’t called a woodlouse.
It’s a wild man who lives in the woods.

 
The wild man saw he was there, straightened and stopped.

 
It was Caleb. He must have spent the night in a hole in the earth, but it was still just about identifiably him. His stare was like an animal’s; there was barely a trace of the human left on him, his straggling hair thick with the litter of the winter ground and all the rest of him lathered with mud. Gav gripped the length of wood more tightly.

 
Caleb twitched, then came on towards the path. Now there was an unmistakable hostility in his approach. Gav glanced back down the way he’d come, but he couldn’t make himself start running, not back to the village where people might be. He tried telling himself there couldn’t be anything to be frightened of. It wasn’t very convincing.

 
The man looked unhinged. He crashed through the screen of branches and came out onto the path, his hands still thrusting aside imaginary obstacles.

 
‘You,’ he said.

 
Gawain lowered the stick, but not all the way.

 
‘What . . .’ Caleb began, limping a couple of steps down the path towards him. ‘What . . .’

 
Gawain tried to say something. Not a sound came out.

 
‘What . . . you . . . done?’ Abruptly Caleb broke into a run and lunged at him, swatting the branch aside. Gav tried to duck away, but Caleb got hands to his jacket and heaved him close. His hair and beard stank like fur. ‘What you done? Eh?’ Gav wriggled his hands onto the man’s arms but couldn’t push him away. ‘What you done?’ Caleb let him go with an angry shove.

 
‘I haven’t—’ he began, but Caleb leaned over him and roared, the pitch of his voice more grief than anger.

 
‘Was all right till you came! Now look!’ He gestured furiously at nothing.

 
‘Caleb?’

 
‘Why don’t you . . . jus’ . . .’ His mouth worked silently, then clamped shut, and he dug his hands deep into his filthy hair.

 
‘Caleb,’ Gav said carefully, in the abrupt silence. ‘What’s happened?’ But the man only swayed from side to side, grimacing. Gav straightened slowly. The earth felt cool and heavy under him, woven through with its web of dormant roots, studded with old rock. ‘What’s going on?’

 
Caleb twisted away. Gav saw that his clothes were scratched all over, as if he’d dragged himself through a bramble patch. What he’d thought was a shambling crouch was actually an injury; Caleb was holding an arm against his ribs, wincing as he turned.

 
‘All gone mad,’ he whispered.

 
‘Are you OK?’

 
‘We was all right before you came. Now what’ll happen?’ Caleb banged his fists against his knees. ‘Now what?’

 
‘Caleb?’ But the man was deaf to him now. Gawain could have just stepped round him and gone on his way, leaving him crouched and whining.

 
Instead he said, ‘I’m going back there.’

 
Caleb’s head whipped up. The wild eyes were now full of fear.

 
‘You can’t.’

 
‘I have to.’

 
‘Don’ make it worse!’

 
‘Worse? Worse than what? Caleb?’ The man was shaking his head and backing away. ‘Is Marina OK? Tell me what happened.’ Fragments of bark and leaf dropped from the shaggy head. Gawain wouldn’t have been surprised to see a vine grow out of Caleb’s mouth, like one of those carved heads in old churches.

 
‘It’s all come back,’ he said. His eyes darted around the wood. ‘Everywhere. Ah. Hurts to cough.’

 
‘What happened to you?’