Authors: James Treadwell

Anarchy (51 page)

BOOK: Anarchy

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R
unning without effort, without pain, up through a wet, deep, invisible forest.

There was only one road. It went up away from light and habitation. The rain softened to a kind of mist, halfway between something and nothing. She rose with the road, running smoothly, lightly, as if she shared the mist's immunity to the pull of the earth.

At the top of the pass she came to a golden grove.

A light so beautiful it felt like you could drink it glowed among broad-leaved trees. She slowed. The trees were oaks and the light was like reflected sunrise, though it was long before dawn and there were no stands of oak among the birches and evergreens along the Hardy road. When she looked for the source that made this island of gold-green radiance in the otherwise infinite night, it seemed that the place was its own illumination, a glow-in-the-dark forest preserving the mellow warmth of an absent sun. The road led into it. She went under boughs sprouting with acorns. Everything was dry, though she heard the sound of running water ahead.

A golden man stood in the grove and watched her go by. Slung over his back was a quiver of arrows, which were plague, and in his hand was a bow. He smiled at her as beautifully as the light and opened his mouth, which was prophecy, though he said nothing. Walking now, she went on toward the water.

A wide, shallow stream marked the edge of the grove. It ran dark. The road continued under the black waters and then emerged on the far side, where it went over the pass and was dark too.

On the distant shore stood a woman no longer young but not yet old, with a long, rather anxious face and an air of waiting not very optimistically for something no one was ever going to give her.

There was no particular margin where the road disappeared into the stream, just still dry ground as far as the edge, and then the opposite. When she reached that edge she stopped, wondering whether she'd gone far enough now and should turn around and head back down the hill to town.

“Is someone there?” the other woman called. She peered across the stream. “Has someone come?”

“Hey,” Goose said.

“Marina?” the woman called doubtfully. “Is that you? Don't cross if that's you.”

Goose thought about a small voice speaking to her from somewhere very far away, too far to know. She turned to look back at the golden man as if for confirmation. He watched her, still smiling.

“Speak to me,” the other woman said, leaning across the stream as far as she dared. “If you're there. Please.”

Goose heard inward echoes of a name.
Marina.
She remembered a child calling in tentative desperation.
Where's Gwen? Can I talk to her again?

“You must be Gwen,” she said.

The other woman twitched in surprise. A look of confused hope appeared in her face. “Yes,” she called. “Yes! I must be.” She stepped hesitantly forward into the stream. “Who's there? Did Marina send you?”

Goose hesitated for a moment. The golden man spoke behind her: “Marie-Archange SÃ©verine Gaucelin-Maculloch.” His voice was if anything more exquisite than his smile. It made her name a poem. While the poem lasted she remembered many things, so many that she thought they must in fact be all the things she had to remember, and all of them, even the embarrassing or frightening ones, now bathed in the marvelous light of the grove.

“I guess she tried to,” she called back. “We got cut off.” The other woman splashed awkwardly in shallow water, the flow eddying around her boots. Goose had remembered the boots too, and the black skirt, and the black leather jacket with a silvery pattern sewn into it.

The poem finished. She saw the woman struggling to cross and stepped in.

They met somewhere near the middle. Gwen clasped her and held on for a long moment.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Ah. It's nothing.”

She looked toward the grove. “I can see light there. Is that the road?”

“Yep. You just follow it all the way. Can't go wrong.”

“Bless you.”

“Not a problem,” the other woman said. The golden glow was fading behind her. She sped up again, carefully at first, with the water lapping around her, and then more steadily once she'd crossed. The road went over the pass and began its descent. Downhill was easy. Downhill was irresistible. She ran as easy as water, easy as air, weightless, senseless, running, running, on down into the dark.

James Treadwell
was born, brought up, and educated within a mile of the Thames, and has spent much of his life further reducing the distance between himself and the river. He studied and taught for more than a decade near the crossing at Folly Bridge, Oxford, and now lives within sight of the Tideway in West London.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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