Arcadia (24 page)

Despite himself he can't help imagining this story, a little bit.

“You know they throw me out?” She catches his eye and smiles like it's a joke. “It's true. When I'm maybe eight, maybe nine, they decide they don't want a gypsy girl. That orphanage, it's the worst place I ever go to, but they think it's too good for me. They put me back in the same white car, drive me to a place where Roma are, and they open the door like so and—
pffwwt!
—out, like rubbish. Drop by the road, drive away. I was not as old as you are now.”

The boat drags, yaws, slips downhill again. Loose things clatter around the cabin's galley.

“What happened?” he says.

“Hmm?”

“What happened then?”

She points at herself, arching her thick black eyebrows.

“You want to hear Silvia's story? It's a long story. I've come a long way.”

“OK,” he says.

She looks at him curiously, as if she's making her mind up about something. “Or maybe you want to know what a small child did, all alone?” He blinks, suddenly tearful. “Except you aren't all alone. No? I told you, I think your road and mine, they go”—she points the index fingers of both hands and lays them beside each other, like the rails of Jake's train set—“like this.”

She doesn't care at all about what's happening to him. He's so astonished by this that it's somehow impossible for him to weep for himself, it's like she's changed the rules.

“I wasn't all alone either. The Roma took me in. They know I belong to them. I live in their camp for a while. An old woman looked after me, made me say she was . . .” She frowns. “The sister of your mother, what do you call this? I forget the word.”

Rory has to concentrate to help her. “You mean aunt?”

Silvia snaps her fingers. “Of course. Aunt, she makes me say she's my aunt. We all live in tiny dirty houses. No floor or water. No one wants to see the Roma so there's no work. I remember one night people come with dogs to make us go away, they want the field we live on. But our dogs were bigger!” She grins at him. “Or maybe hungrier. Another old woman, she took me into towns with her to beg. In the towns I have to pretend I am her daughter's daughter.”

“That's granddaughter.”

“Granddaughter, thank you. I have to go like this”—
cough, cough
. “Pretend I am sick so people will give more money. And sometimes people come to the camp and give my aunt money to tell their fortune. That's how I lived. But it was better than the orphanage. My hair grew back!” She tugs it and smiles, sharing a joke.

It's too much. He stares back at her. Her smile disappears and she studies him for a while. Then she edges closer to him, sliding along the seat, bracing her legs against the plastic table in the middle of the cabin, leans close and says:

“Tell me, Rory. Do you believe in fate?”

She's talking almost in his ear. He's been stolen from his home, he's nauseous, he doesn't think he's ever going to see his mother again, and instead of curling up and crying his wretched heart out he's talking to a mysterious gypsy about fate.

“As soon as I saw you,” Silvia goes on, “I know our roads run together. Do you believe that?”

Does he? Does it really matter what he believes? He thought he was only ten and nobody cared what he thought about anything, let alone destiny.

“Dunno.”

“But it's true. Everyone carries their fate with them.” She's murmuring, like she's sharing a secret. Every time the boat pitches he's pressed right up against her shoulder and he can smell the grassy dirty musk of her hair. “Everyone likes to think they're free, you know? Like they do what they want. In Romania, Bulgaria, everywhere, people said this all the time.
Now we are free. Give us more freedom!
Like they can choose their fate. But it's not true. Your fate is outside you. But like a shadow, you see. Attached. It's like this for everyone, even children. I see it when I look at you. The first time, in that old place, in the rain. I see this . . .” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Big shadow. Covering you.” She turns to stare at him, very close. “Do you believe this?”

He can certainly feel a dark cloud above him but he doesn't think that's what she means.

She settles back and folds her arms. “When I was nine years old, in that house in the field, with no floor? And people came to hear their fortune? They came to the old woman, the one who calls herself my aunt. But it's me who knows the answers.” She watches him as if she's afraid he's not listening properly. “It's true. Nine-year-old girl. There was this man one day, a farmer, big man. He comes to the camp. His son's getting married, he wants to know about the girl. You know, is she healthy here”—Silvia taps below her stomach—“will she bring boys, will she love other men, all this. The old woman sends me away to fetch a handkerchief and put his money away and when I'm coming back I look in his face and I see his fate, so I say don't worry because he will be dead before the wedding.” Silvia smiles grimly. “He was very angry. My aunt too. She beat me afterwards. The man took all his money back, says I curse his son. But I'm not talking about the son, I mean the man. In two months he was dead. The old woman too. While she's beating me I tell her she will die soon after the man. Four days after we hear the farmer is dead, my aunt is drunk in the road and a truck hits her. Do you believe me?”

One look at her face is enough to tell him that doubting her isn't an option.

“It's true. Everyone in the world has a road they travel. Sometimes I see ahead, one turn maybe, two turns, or up or down. Sometimes the end. When I was little, like you, I think everyone can see like this. In that camp I learn, no, I am special.” She shakes her head. “You know how I learn? Because the others, the men, they start to bring more people to our camp. To take their money! They make me work. This is how stupid people are. ‘Look, here is Silvia, she has a gift, how can we use this gift to get money?' Then the men take the money and buy vodka and cigarettes. More vodka and cigarettes, that's how I find out I'm special.” She looks away, brooding.

Rory has two feelings inside him and no way of making them join up. On the one hand he's been kidnapped, betrayed by a horrible failure of his own brilliant idea, helpless and lost, and he's never going to see Home again. On the other hand he's on a quest with a gang of superheroes.

“You mean,” he says, when it becomes apparent that Silvia's backed herself into some kind of dead end, “you can see the future?”

“Yes,” she says, as if he's just asked her whether she's tied her shoelace.

He makes an effort to process this. “So . . .”

“Now you're going to ask, ‘What will happen next?' ” That's exactly what he was going to ask, but now he has to pretend it wasn't. “It's not like a book.” She mimes turning pages, peering at the next chapter and going
ahh!
“It's not all written like this, waiting for us to come to the right page. If you ask me when we're going to reach land, I send you up to ask Per. I don't know the next page. I know everyone in the world has their own fate. Your fate belongs to you, mine to me. Even if they go like this.” She makes the train tracks with her fingers again. “Sometimes the shadow of it falls on your face and I see it there. I'm not like the girls on TV who tell you the weather.” She chirps, “ ‘Tomorrow morning will be rain, then in the afternoon sun.' ” She shakes her head. “Not like this. The men, the Roma, they take me to watch horses race in the fields and they ask me which one will win. They want to bet and make money! And when I don't know they beat me. Do they beat you all the time? Those women, on that island?”

“No,” he says.

“I didn't think so. You have nice easy life, I think. Big house full of food and many women to look after you. And then—” She snaps her fingers close to his face and waves around to indicate the decrepit cabin. “This.”

He grips the back of the seats more tightly.

Silvia sighs. “But this is your fate, you see. Maybe it's not so bad too. You tell me that your mother is going to take you away, yes? She's afraid you will grow older and the
sirene
will take you, so she wants to carry you from that island in this boat? So if not for this you go with her, and then either you drown or you starve. You don't believe me? It's true for certain. Even if you cross the sea and don't drown, when you come to land you die. Me and Lino, we come across half of Europe this year. I know what's happening everywhere. You and your mother, just two of you, on land?
Ai
.” She puffs her cheeks out and shakes her head. “You are lucky that isn't your fate. You are lucky the storm blows me and Lino and Per to your little island.”

Black thoughts sting him. “How's it lucky?” he says, as sulkily as he dares.

“Hmm?” She wasn't expecting him to say anything.

“How's it lucky? If it's fate. It's not luck if it's fate, is it. It can't be both.”

She's startled for a moment, and then she laughs. “Philosopher,” she says.

“Didn't you know there was going to be a storm?”

“No. I told you, I'm not a weather girl.”

“So what's the point? What's the use of seeing the future if you can't . . .” He blurts this out in a little fit of anger, enraged that she's making him listen to her story and telling him how nice his life is when she ought to be apologizing for kidnapping him and doing her best to comfort him like grown-ups are supposed to do for children when they're sad. The fit drains away very quickly under the force of her stare.

He's never seen an adult stare the way Silvia does, not even Kate. The thing with adults is you can tell they're not really interested when they talk to you, they're actually thinking about something else. Not Silvia.

“Little man,” she finally says. “ ‘What's the use?' For men it's never enough to know anything. Always everything is to
use
.” She flicks her eyes upwards, indicating the deck, where Lino and Per are. “Like them,” she says, with heartfelt emphasis, as if she's exposing their most terrible secret. She slides close to Rory again, holding her balance as the cabin rocks and shudders. “I told you I have a gift? You remember?”

“Yes.”

“My teacher, who taught me to speak English, liked to explain this word.
Gift
. It's not
tool
. It's not
power
. It's”—she cups her hands and presents them to Rory, as if offering him rainwater—“like this. A thing given. A free thing. Not for something else. You understand?”

She can tell from his face that he doesn't. She leans back and shrugs.

“Let me tell you about Lino,” she says. “Then maybe you see what a gift is. I told you, his name means
little bir
d
? It's not his real name, of course. Not from when he was born. He has a proper name, Antonio I think. But his mother and father call him Uccellino from when he is a small child. Because even when he's this small he likes to climb up things and jump. All the time. He climbs from . . . What do you call the bed for a baby?”

“Cot.”

“He climbs from his cot and jumps out to the ground. He climbs onto chairs, tables, jumps off. Like he wants to fly. When he's a bit older he climbs where the books are, high up. He's from a nice family. Nice house, lots of books, up to the ceiling. They find him”—she stretches a hand above her head—“here. Curled up on the edge. He's like this all the time. At first the nice family think it's a joke, it's funny, their little boy who likes climbing up things. They give him a special name. On the floors they put . . .” She pats the frayed foam padding of the seat impatiently.

“Cushions?”

“Cushions. They put cushions so he can jump and not hurt himself. They watch him, make videos, show their friends. Then one day he breaks his arm jumping from a window in the house. Now it's not a joke anymore. They're angry; they're frightened. They tell him to stop but he doesn't. He dreams all the time that he is flying. So they take him to doctors. Still he doesn't stop. They find him sleeping on the roof. If he falls off the roof sleeping he will break his head open, so they put bars on the windows, they lock him in his room, OK, but he has to go to school, he has to play outside, they can't stop that, and all the time he's climbing trees, climbing walls. High, high up, as far as he can go. So the nice parents and the doctors, they decide the boy is mad.” She swivels a finger in the air beside her head. “They send him to a place, I don't know how to say it in English. For mad children.”

“Loony bin.”

She raises an eyebrow slightly, but goes on. “It's a nice place, I think. Not like my orphanage. His parents love him; they have money. They come to see him every day. So this is where he grows up. A locked room with bars on the windows. Hands tied like this when he goes outside to play, so he can't climb. When he can't climb his dreams get worse. He dreams he's a bird, flying everywhere. Then, one night, he wakes up, it's dark, and he's outside, high above the town. He can see it all there below him. It's not a dream, he's sitting in the branch of a tree. He's far away but he can see the window of his room in the . . .”

“Loony bin.”

“He can see the bars on the window. It's summer; the glass is open. He can see his bed inside, where he was sleeping, but he's not in the bed, he's holding the branch of a tree with his feet. Then. He jumps.”

Rory watches her make a long gliding motion with one hand. She looks at him as if to check whether he's understood.

“Then what?”

“He jumps. From the branch of a tree, high. He doesn't fall. He flies, like in his dream. All over the town.”