Arcadia (40 page)

“Up to Goonhilly.” She holds a layer of sheets in place over one arm while the man starts winding twine around them, tying them on. It's like she's putting on a layer of padding. “To visit our local oracle.”

“Know what that means?” the man says.

Rory's shy about getting things wrong in front of these people, so he shakes his head.

“Means she knows stuff,” the man says.

“Sometimes,” Ellie says, like she's not at all convinced.

“More often than not,” the man says. Ellie cocks her eyebrows.

“What for?”

“The idea's to see what we can do with that staff of yours,” Ellie says.

“It's not mine,” Rory says quickly. He's been bothered all morning by his dream-which-wasn't-a-dream, the kind of bothered you can't tell anyone about.

“Well, whoever's it was, it's ours now, and it might come in ­useful.”

“Sal's hoping the kid'll come,” the man says, exposing himself as the normal kind of adult, the kind that's happier talking about children than to them. “Knows more about it than the rest of us do. Might recognize something Amber says.”

“Fluent in gibberish at all?” Ellie asks him. Even the man chuckles at that.

“What's Amber?”

“Amber's the oracle.”

“A person?”

“Oh yes. Actually, she's probably about your age.”

“They might get on,” the man says, winking at Ellie. He holds his arm out and she starts wrapping it the same way he did for her. She's changed some of her rings since yesterday. There's a new one with a gargoyle face, and one studded with purple and black cubes.

“So what do you think?” Ellie says to Rory. “We've got a double saddle, it'll be a lot more comfortable. And I certainly won't let any of Sal's posse tie you up.”

“Less uncomfortable at least,” the man says.

“All right,” Rory says, mostly, if he's honest, because he likes the idea of going with Ellie, though it's also true that he'd rather not have to hang around the camp with the other children, who haven't been particularly friendly so far that morning.

“All right?” the man says, grinning. He's shaved his head almost bald and has a hard, pitted face; the grin exposes hard, pitted teeth. “See oracles every day over on Scilly, do you? Got hundreds of them, have you?”

“Stop it, Rog,” Ellie says, not crossly.

“What are you doing that for?” Rory asks her. Ellie's tugging the twine as tight as it'll go. She and Rog exchange a different kind of look, more serious, before she answers.

“It's normal,” she says. “We always prepare before we ride out from Dolphin.”

“Sensible precautions,” Rog says, as if reciting something.

“We'll be fine. It's not all that long a ride, you'll be glad to hear.”

Draped on the log beside her is a black leather jacket. Rory didn't recognize it as clothes at first because it's sewn all over with pieces of metal: chain links, rings, rivets, eyelets. Now that he's looking properly he sees that quite a lot of the people he thought were just standing around fiddling with things are, in fact, arming themselves. As he scans them, a skinny man with a straggly beard moves apart from the people standing nearby and unfolds a long leather satchel on the ground. Out of it he takes a sword. An actual sword.

Ellie sees what's caught his eye. “Ah,” she says. “Perse. He does love his big weapon.”

Rog giggles. “What's his real name? Brian?”

“Quiet,” Ellie says. The man with the sword hefts it in his hands and waves it around a few times as if pretend fighting. “God help us. Where did he get that thing?”

“Off that loony up by St. Ives.”

Ellie shrugs. “I don't remember that one.”

“Called himself the Pendragon.”

“That doesn't narrow the field much.”

“Some kind of hobbyist. He had bits of chain mail too. Shame we lost that.”

“I wish he wasn't coming,” Ellie says, watching the man with the sword out of the corner of her eye. “He's going to take his own arm off one of these days.”

Rog grimaces. “You know what he's like. Missed a fight yesterday, he'll be desperate for something to come along today.”

“Rog,” Ellie warns.

“Eh.” Rog looks at Rory as if only just noticing him. “Just kidding. There won't be any fighting or anything.”

But when all the groups finally assemble by the gate at the end of the long avenue of trees, there's an unmistakable sense of an armed expedition. There are about twelve or fifteen of them (it's hard to count with them all milling around), mostly but not all women, and every one of them is padded or cloaked or helmeted in a ragtag assortment of homespun armor. He sees Sal carrying her motorbike helmet under her arm, and Jody looking more than a bit silly with lumpy stuffing under her trousers and coat, and Soph wearing a tunic of mismatched metal sheets overlapping like scales. Soph sticks out because hers is actually quite striking: some of the scales are tinged with rust or oil maybe, so she's glistening almost-colors, like a fish. Haze is there too. Among the men is a long-haired, muscled young bloke who came up to Rory earlier that morning and asked him in a low embarrassed voice whether he knew anything about Tiffany Someone-or-Other from Maries; he didn't. A lot of the Riders have things which look like weapons sticking out of saddlebags or slung over their backs, not just Perse and his sword but lengths of wood and bicycle chains (the women seem to prefer the bicycle chains). One of the clubs has nails sticking out all over its top.

Sal's got the staff. He sees it poking out by her leg as they ride under the strange assortment of things (a teddy bear, a belt, a mobile phone, a framed photo, a plastic milk bottle) suspended from the trees at the gate. He has a sudden feeling that he ought to go up to Sal and tell her they should ride to wherever the nearest cliffs are and throw the staff into the sea, or maybe take it somewhere far away, dig it a grave, and bury it. But he doesn't. Who'd listen to him anyway? Hester might, he thinks, but he hasn't seen her today. He's overheard someone saying her legs were bad, and talking about poppy juice. (There's a scene in one of the old comics where the hero's fallen down a mountain in Tibet and gets rescued by a Villager with funny-shaped eyes and a big glossy curly beard who takes him to his humble goat-shed and gives him a bowl to drink, saying
Here, stranger . . . Milk of the poppy
:
he never understood but always liked the idea of a place where flowers have milk.)

It's a cool grey day, of a kind he recognizes from the islands, blowy and hinting at scattered rain. If he could see the sea there'd be ghost curtains moving over it, distant showers. They've found him a warm hooded coat and a black-and-yellow shirt with a logo that says
CORNISH PIRATES
. He didn't want to give up his own shirt but Soph said it stank and they have soap. It's very alarming being so high off the ground, perched across the back of this huge swaying horse, and his legs and bum start to get achy quite quickly, but it's not so bad with a saddle to sit on and Ellie showing him how to hold himself. And being high up means he can see over the hedges sometimes, across the folds and rises of the green-brown land, studded with dull-windowed ruins and barns swamped in ivy and little dots of color which must be late wildflowers. The breeze rolls stripes across tall grass.

Ellie's in a chatty mood, which is OK because she's just chatting, not trying too hard to be friendly, and she doesn't mind if he just listens. She tells him about the things hanging over the entrance gate. Everyone living in the camp at Dolphin has to put one up, so they know they belong there (what she actually says is “so the house knows they belong there” but that's more like the kind of thing Esme would say, and small sturdy sarcastic Ellie's about as unlike Esme as anyone could be, so Rory wonders if he heard wrong). She won't tell him what her thing is. She tells him a story about one woman whose token kept falling down no matter how carefully they tied it: one day she hurt a child and they expelled her. She tells him that Dolphin House is very old, and so has stronger attachments, which makes it safer. (She doesn't say what this means.) It's true that there's no king or queen. Thinking of Kate and Fi, he asks who organizes their jobs, and she says they just work it out, and if people don't like it they go and live elsewhere. He looks around as they ride and wonders where those other places might be. The land's so devastated, so empty. It's like a world before people. Or after, maybe, he thinks, as they pass a double decker bus leaning into a stand of trees, branches nosing through its long-broken windows, its green paintwork scoured and peeling so it's dappled like the autumn woods.

They go at a steady walk, jangling and clanking and talking. It's a louder ride than yesterday's. Rory wonders whether that's because there are men with them (Rog has come, and the man with the scarf who's called Baker, though he's not wearing the scarf today). One man in particular, an older-looking man whose neck is black with tattoos, rides up and down the group a lot making loud comments and laughing noisily. He tries to chat with Rory, stuff about how Rory's one of them now, but he's definitely one of those grown-ups who sounds like he's faking it when he talks to children, so he gives up after a while. Ellie doesn't seem to like him much either. He asks her why there are men riding today when there weren't any yesterday.

“Don't you have the man-eaters in the Scillies, then?” she asks, surprised. “Yes you do, I heard you talk about them. The sirens.”

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah.”

“We're not going in sight of the coast today,” she says. “Up at Goonhilly you can see the sea in the distance but it's so far off it's safe for the men.”

Rog is riding nearby. He spurs his horse alongside. “We're an endangered species,” he says to Rory, winking again. “We blokes. Need lots of looking after, hey El? Wouldn't want you girls to run out of men.”

“Goodness no,” Ellie says very drily. “Imagine that.”

“Used to like a bit of the old surfing,” Rog goes on. “But I've had to give that up. Remember Simon, El? Smiley Simon? Thought he'd be all right 'cos he was gay. Turns out the man-eaters don't care about your sexual preferences.” He rolls his eyes at the last two words, making them into some sort of joke which Rory doesn't get. “They just want us all dead.”

“Rog.”

“What?”

“You weren't in the audience last night, were you?”

“Better things to do,” he says roguishly.

Ellie's not interested in sharing his joke. “Rory told us that every man in the Scillies is gone. He was the last boy.”

“Oh,” Rog says, not quite abashed, but getting there. “I see. That can't be much fun for the . . .” He sniffs, wipes his mouth, thinks better of whatever he was going to say.

“Did you have brothers and sisters?” Ellie says.

“A brother and a sister. They left with my dad.”

“Left?”

“Sailed. They went to find out What Happened.”

“Oh.”

“Me and Mum stayed behind.”

“You never found out what happened to them?”

“No. They were supposed to go to the Mainland.”

“Let's hope they didn't,” Ellie says. He wasn't expecting that answer and has to think about it.

“Do you miss your mum?” she says, while he's still thinking.

“Dunno.” He's embarrassed now.

“I miss mine.” Ellie has an even voice. She says everything as if she's very slightly bored, or perhaps very slightly annoyed.

“Where is she?”

“No idea. She was at home with my younger brother and sister when it all started. In Hertfordshire. I tried to get back there after the blizzards but it was chaos.”

“Is that far? Couldn't you look for her?”

“Look for her? Up country?”

He's said the wrong thing. “Sorry.”

“Maybe one day,” she says. “If we can get rid of the Pack. And if I can raise an army to go with me.”

Rog chips in, trying to be encouraging. “If your mum was tough like you she'll have been all right.”

“She wasn't,” Ellie says.

“Oh.”

Jody drops back to join them, relieving an uncomfortable pause. “Hear about the big bastard?” she says.

“I heard they took him already,” Rog says.

“Looks like it,” Jody says. “Just been talking to Haze about it. She said bits of the twine had gone black.”

“She went down to check this morning?”

“Her and Stella. He was gone when they got there so they didn't bother looking close. But she's wondering now why the ties'd be charred.”

“How does she know they're charred if she wasn't looking closely?” Ellie says.

Jody gives Ellie a cross look. “Just saying what she told me.” She turns the look on Rory. “Made me wonder if the boy might have any ideas.”

“About what?” says Rog.

“Whether something funny happened down there in the night.”

“Rory was asleep in the top of our barn in the night,” Ellie says.

“I know that,” Jody says. “Whether he knows what that big bloke might have got up to, is what I'm talking about.”

“Can't see there's much point worrying about it now the man-eaters got him,” Rog says.

“Man-eaters don't set things on fire,” Jody says. It's obvious she's not that friendly with Rog and Ellie.

“Who said anything about a fire?”

“Does any of this mean anything to you, Rory?” Ellie says, in a way which invites him to say no.

“No.”

“Get Haze to tell you,” Jody says, spurring her horse ahead again.

“Maybe later,” Rog calls after her. But now the slow parade is halting in front of them.

They've reached a rise where the road widens. The front group of Riders has stopped. Ellie leans against Rory's back to make the reins tighter and pulls their horse up too, letting it scrunch at the hedge while they wait.