Advent (70 page)

 
Up and on, over the gentle crest, towards the hollow where the chapel was, trying not to think of his pursuers, one slow but remorseless, one deadly quick. Beneath the layer of snow the flints and roots shredded his shirt and trousers. He looked like a tortoise struggling under a dirty pink and blonde shell. Not far, he kept telling himself, expecting at every moment to hear the howl that would mean he’d failed, he was dead. Not far. The last steep little slope, where he’d once watched Marina scramble unthinkingly towards her capture, was an unspeakable torture, but he managed it. The ancient building appeared in the gloom. He scraped and gasped his way through the straggly hollies and found the door still open.

 
He dragged himself to the edge of the pool and with a final heave of his shoulders tipped Marina off his back. It was all but pitch black inside, and utterly silent beyond the heaving rattle of his breath. He reached down and cupped water into his mouth.

 
He often thought later that if he could have bottled one instant of his life to keep for ever that would have been it, despite the hammering terror and the desperate ignorance. The pain washed out of his legs and arms as if it had been no more than dust, rinsed away. Where I began, he thought, and for a blissful moment he felt like he’d sloughed off his aching and scratched and battered skin and emerged new-born, pristine.

 
It was only a moment. There was no time. He grabbed Marina and turned her over until her head dangled over the stone lip. ‘Last chance,’ he muttered. He was still breathing hard; even the effort of kneeling up beside her made him suck air. ‘If y’don’t . . . wake up . . . now’ – he reached down to the pool – ‘I’m . . . leaving you . . . here.’ He tipped her head up and splashed the handful of water into her mouth.

 
He’d become so used to the sprawled, awkward weight of her that he almost dropped her head when it twitched in his hands.

 
He knelt closer, whispering urgently, ‘That’s right. Wake up.’ There was no time. The dog was coming, there was no time. ‘Come on. Come on.’ He scooped another trickling fistful between her lips. She quivered again. ‘Got to drink some.’ He cradled her head in the crook of his elbow. She squirmed reluctantly. He guided his cupped palm to her mouth. ‘Drink up.’ He tipped the water onto her tongue. ‘Do you good. There you go.’ He felt her swallow. ‘And another . . . There.’

 
At the third mouthful she spasmed like a struggling animal. He held on, waited for her to relax. Her head turned, and though it was too dim to see her face he was sure her eyes had opened.

 
‘Mummy?’

 
It was the small clear voice he remembered.

 
‘Marina!’

 
‘Hello,’ she said. She hadn’t moved. She seemed suddenly quite comfortable, propped against him. ‘I think I might be asleep.’

 
‘Marina. We need to go. Right now.’ But he couldn’t let go of her. It would have been like dropping a baby.

 
‘You aren’t my mother, are you.’

 
‘Jesus.’ He straightened and felt the gnaw of frustration as she adjusted herself to settle back against his arm. ‘No you don’t. Come on. Get up.’ The seconds were ticking away.

 
‘I don’t want to, I’m comfy.’

 
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Her head dropped back with a squeak of indignant surprise. ‘Stand up. Now.’ He tugged her upright with him. She wobbled, clutching his arm.

 
‘Wait. What . . .’ The sleepiness had gone, replaced by anxious alarm. ‘Where—’

 
He took advantage of her hands on his arm to pull her towards the threshold. ‘Just come with me. Fuck’s sake, hurry!’

 
He drew her out into the scraps and shreds of dying light. She stumbled next to him, looking around in confusion.

 
‘This is the chapel,’ she said, sounding more and more panicky. ‘And you’re . . . you’re—’

 
He held her shoulders to make her look straight at him. Her sallow, beaky face had lost all its elfin animation. She was deeply frightened.

 
‘Marina, listen. You have to come with me. OK? Now. Fast.’

 
‘But what—’

 
‘Now!’ He tugged her and set off down the path, clinging fiercely to her wrist as if she was a child having a tantrum.

 
‘Gavin? What’s— Ow! Stop! What’s happening?’

 
‘Can’t stop to explain. We have to get away.’

 
‘Away?’

 
‘Right now.’

 
‘But— no, stop!’ She planted her feet and tried to hold him back. He was stronger. ‘Ow!’ she yelped again, pitching forward behind him.

 
‘Just come on.’

 
‘Ow, no!’

 
‘Yes, Marina, yes.’

 
‘What about— No! Stop! Daddy!’

 
They were slipping together down the steep incline. He wished she’d be quieter. He wished she’d hurry. He had the prickling, shivering, distracting certainty that something was coming closer. They’d been far too slow already. They’d never had a chance. The hunter was almost on them.

 
‘Come on!’ he urged, and his tone was almost as panicky as hers.

 
‘I can’t leave Daddy! He was crying!’

 
‘We have to. Please, just—’

 
‘No. No! Caleb disappeared and then she . . . she . . .’

 
She was slowing him down. He was too tired to battle her, too weak to drag her along. ‘We’ll go back afterwards,’ he said. He was seeing black shadows everywhere in the deep darkness under the trees, closing in. ‘We’ve just got to—’

 
‘Afterwards? After what?’

 
‘We have to get you away.’

 
‘Where?’

 
‘Down to the river. Quick! For fuck’s sake, please, hurry!’

 
‘The . . . No! I can’t! Stop!’ Her voice rose to a shriek, and she tried with both hands to haul him back. ‘I’ll die!’

 
‘Marina—’

 
‘Not like winter. I won’t come back. I’ll die properly. For ever!’

 
‘Marina!’ He whirled round. They had passed the dip in the path and stood at the top of the long slope that descended to the river. ‘I swear, if we don’t hurry up, right now, we’ll both be dead in five minutes. OK?’ And without loosening his grip on her wrist he turned back down the path; but they didn’t have five minutes, after all. They didn’t have one.

 
They had no time at all, none.

 
The black dog was there, standing on the bridge. Its eyes were two dying stars in the near-night of the wood.

 
Too late, Gawain thought to himself, with a strangely empty sigh. Oh well. I almost made it.

 
It growled like distant thunder and stepped towards them.

 
My death.

 
To his surprise, he found himself thinking of the promise he’d made his mother. Not his mother. Iz. The one he hadn’t meant to make until he said it. Telling her he’d come back some day and find her. How long would she hang on to that promise? When, he wondered, would she give in and admit to herself that he’d lied to her, that he wasn’t coming back, while he rotted away among the discarded leaves with his neck broken and his throat torn out? Never?

 
‘That’s not a real animal.’ Marina’s voice behind him was a tiny frightened whisper. For a couple of paces the dog trotted, gathering itself. Then it was charging.

 
This must be what they mean by one’s life flashing before one’s eyes, Gawain decided, as he released Marina’s wrist and took the rowan staff in both hands. It was as if he was standing to one side of himself, watching himself having these thoughts, his last thoughts, with a curious kind of detachment. It wasn’t that he suddenly remembered everything all at once; it was that the few seconds remaining to him seemed to be happening incredibly slowly, while his mind raced at light speed. How come he had time to find Marina’s remark so comically ridiculous?
Not a real animal.
Hmm, you think? With fire trailing from its onrushing mouth and the blazing fury in its eyes? No, not exactly the pooch next door. Although given that it’s been sent to kill me, excuse me for not caring too much whether or not it’s a fake. He was swinging the staff up in front of him to make a barrier, though it was perfectly obvious he might as well be trying to stop a cannonball with a chopstick.

 
The dog’s mouth was opening soundlessly. No howl, no growl, just the soft percussion of its paws in the snow and the jaws readying. But in the strange slow-motion silence he thought he heard and remembered its dark and hungry voice, its litany of hunt and kill. Hello, my death, he thought. My death.
Through the door you left open walks my end
. Miss Grey’s voice drifted dreamily into his head. He saw the cruel teeth bared in the long muzzle.
It’s to do with maintaining a relationship with the spirit world
. Hester’s mild voice joined in. Now his life was flashing before his ears instead of his eyes.
The mask is a sort of vehicle for a spirit. Or a dwelling place. Or a mouth.
Some other mouth was screaming, a tight-throated, half-choked scream. Maybe it was him.

 
Voices around him. He remembered the room swimming with voices. The way they’d seemed to turn towards him when his hands touched the mask. Maybe it was him.

 
The fiery eyes were close.
Through the door you left open.
It
was
him. The mask was a door. His hands had opened it and the fire had flowed in. That was the kind of door Miss Grey was talking about.

 
Close the door, he thought, as the widening mouth leaped, the twin stars filled his vision, and the blackness blotted everything else out. Close the door. The scream was definitely Marina. His own eyes twisted shut. The curtain coming down. End of story.

 
He felt the door against his fingers.

 
He closed it.

 
Marina finished screaming. Something clattered in front of them. Gawain’s heart finished its beat. He opened his eyes.

 
The only sound was a weird soft hiss in the air, disembodied. A flare of red-gold light spiralled up and faded away into the sleeping trees.

 
The mask that had gone missing from Hester’s house lay on the path at Gawain’s feet, tipped sideways, propped on its blunt snout.

 
As if someone had pressed the fast-forward button, the usual ratio of thought to time reasserted itself. A hundred things went through Gawain’s head, but now they were all in one great confused babbling crowd. The only thing he was aware of thinking was that now he’d be keeping his promise, after all.        

 
‘What is that?’ Marina said. She sounded as if she was in shock. She’d gone ghost-white, as bloodless as her mother. She prodded the mask with her toe hesitantly, as if it might still bite.

 
Among the many things rushing through Gawain’s mind was that he thought he knew the answer to that question, and that it was because he knew the answer that he’d been able to do what he’d done, closed the door through the mask as he’d unintentionally opened it before, and that was why he wasn’t now dead, and that discovering the answer to questions like that was maybe the most important thing about who he now was, who he was destined to be, Gawain, White Hawk, Hawk of May, the stupid boy, the prophetess’s heir.

 
‘Don’t touch it,’ he said. She jerked her foot back at once. ‘It’s a mask. I saw it before. You were right, something was wearing it, something that didn’t belong. It’s gone now. Come on, let’s go. Quickly.’

 
She edged nervously around it and broke into a half-run to catch up with him.