Prospero's Children (20 page)

The rack teetered perilously as Will lurched toward the window.

“It doesn’t open,” he said.

“Break it,” said Fern.

Well versed in TV thrillers, he took off his T-shirt—a complicated maneuver on top of a wine-rack—wrapped it round his arm, and punched at the glass. But the glazing, though old, was obstinate; after several blows he had achieved nothing but bruised knuckles and a sense of furious irritation. “I can’t get enough swing,” he told his sister. “Pass up one of the bottles.” With a silent apology to her father, Fern complied. An instant later there was a crash which she hoped Alimond would not hear, a pattering of falling glass, and an overwhelming smell of vintage Corton. Will cursed fluently as his naked chest was doused in wine.

“Come on!” said Fern. “If she missed that she must be in the barn; that means she’s started.”

“The
barn
?”

“The
trompe l’oeil
: remember? All that talk of conversion was just a cover: she’s fixed it up for her occult activities. That’s where she’s going to try and open the Gate. You’ve got to get out, and then let me out. Come
on
!”

But it took Will some time to clear away the broken panes, and the framework was too stubborn for his efforts: eventually, he was forced to wriggle through a gap perhaps a foot square, into the uncut grass at the side of the house. He failed to see the clump of nettles in his immediate vicinity and whipped back a hand already stinging into an angry scarlet. Had he been a little bigger and broader in the shoulders, he would never have managed to get through. As it was, when he finally unbolted the cellar door to release Fern he was a gory sight, smeared dark red with burgundy, streaked with drying blood where he had nicked himself on the glass, grass-stains and earth-stains over all. She hugged him, regardless of the wine, and after a moment he hugged her back, both of them untypically demonstrative.

“She’s not here,” Will said, meaning Alimond. “You must be right: she’s in the barn. What do we do now?”

“What we can,” said Fern, and there was a shiver in her voice as if she were on the edge of tears, but she had released him and turned away before Will could see her face.

Outside, a lingering sunset heralded the end of the long summer’s day. Attenuated shadows slanted eastward across the valley; Ragginbone’s rock was almost invisible against the dark mass of the hill. Fern glanced quickly away from it, her heart shrinking. It seemed to her a lifetime since she had opened the door to him, many lives since she and Will had gone down to the village that morning to find the key to the desk. It was as if a single day had stretched out into an infinite spool of time, and she was trapped within it like a mouse on a wheel, desperately going nowhere. Nightfall might bring an ending too fantastic to imagine.

The barn was bisected with shadow, the roof and small high windows still golden in the sunshine. Nothing could have looked less like a sorcerer’s fane. It resembled a Victorian painting of rural England, a deserted building dozing in the mellow light against a green background of valley and hill. It was only when they reached the barn door that Fern felt the familiar sense of oppression emanating from it, as if the rustic scene was indeed no more substantial than canvas, and behind it a darkness waited which the light could barely contain. She tried the great door, very gingerly for fear of alerting Alimond, but although her hand did not react it was obviously locked from inside. When she bent down to peer through the keyhole she could see nothing, though she thought she heard the echo of Alimond’s voice, chanting what might be an incantation. “We have to get in,” she told Will.

He grimaced. “The window?”

“Mm. My turn this time.”

They had no leisure to go in search of a ladder, so Will stood on one of the more stable kitchen chairs and Fern scrambled awkwardly onto his shoulders, supporting herself against the barn wall. When she finally managed to stand upright she was comfortably on a level with the window. The glass had long gone, and she put her hand through a vacant pane to feel for the latch. Alimond’s chant was clearly audible now; also a faint hissing, a breath on the edge of sound, like the exhalation of a fire but far softer. The frame was stiff: when Fern pulled it outward, involving some perilous balancing as she tried to squirm out of the way, it made a rasping noise which brought her heart into her mouth; but the witch continued oblivious. Fern remembered Ragginbone saying something about the total concentration required for maintaining the circle; emboldened, she clambered over the sill, landing on the floor of the hayloft with a thump which went equally unremarked. She brushed off a few wisps of straw and leaned out of the window. Will was looking up at her.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“What are you going to do?” The difficult question again.

“Try and get the key back.” She didn’t look hopeful. “Listen: there’s no point in your waiting here. Go down to the village, fetch Gus; he might be able to help.”

“D’you think he could cope with Alison?” Will said uncertainly.

“Not really. But we need some support, and he’s the best option.”

“Good luck.”

She smiled in acknowledgment, a curious, close-lipped smile which, he thought, made her appear suddenly much older, no more his teenage sister but a woman grown, a stranger. Then she was gone. He leaned against the wall for a minute, straining to pick up any whisper of sound, but the barn remained silent. Then he set off for the village, his walk breaking into a run, wondering as he went what on earth he would say to Gus.

Inside, Fern stole to the edge of the hayloft and knelt on the floorboards to look down.

The first thing she saw was the
trompe l’oeil
, uncovered now, the details of flower-tendrils and basking lizard indistinguishable in the gloaming. It stood at the hub of a wide semicircle which ran from wall to wall, its perimeter drawn in flame, beyond it not a half pentagram but a rayed star with many points. Alimond was positioned inside the boundary this time, a difference which Fern appreciated by instinct. She was binding herself in her own invocation—a hazardous proceeding—if anything went wrong she would be caught in the vortex of catastrophe, unable to escape. She had changed into the red wool dress and her face and arms gleamed ghost-pale in the gloom of the barn. The last light of the sun leaked through the westward window, splashing the farther wall with a hazy patchwork of gold; there was little other illumination. The fire-lines gave off only a faint glow, too muted to reach Alimond. Her long hair had dulled to the color of shadow; the hue of her dress was as somber as an old blood-stain. Her left hand was closed tightly on the key, her right described a series of sinuous, almost boneless movements, as if the member had acquired its own insidious identity, and the fingers writhed and undulated with serpentine skill. Fern, staring too long and too hard at those darkly seen indicta, found herself sliding into a state of mesmerism approaching a trance. She forced her brain back to alertness and focused on the outpouring of Atlantean, trying to pick out a word here and there for later use. As the chant progressed slivers of light flickered into being between Alimond’s fingers and leaped toward the door, playing across the painting like will-o’-the-wisps, igniting random fragments into glimmering visibility. Seeing the witch totally immersed in her practices, Fern began to edge toward the broken ladder. The sudden extinguishing of the late sunshine brought her to an abrupt halt. She realized that the sun must have dipped behind the hill, leaving the barn entirely in shadow. Only the fire-lines remained, a penciling of brightness floating as if rootless in the vacuum of the semi-dark. There was a moment when it seemed to Fern that the wall of the building had thinned into transparency, and both circle and star were complete, and the Door stood alone at the center like a portal into nowhere.

She found the top of the ladder more by touch than sight and started her descent, moving softly out of habit. When she came to the missing rungs she lost her footing and slithered the rest of the way down, but Alimond was beyond hearing. Her incantation was rising, soaring to a crescendo, and her voice grew with the litany, so that for a minute Fern thought it had become many voices, as if a whole chorus spoke through her mouth. There was a noise like scalding steam and a barrier of flame sprang up from the periphery of the circle, enclosing Alimond and the Door in a translucent cylinder whose marbled fires shone dimly blue, shot now and then with flickers of angry yellow. The barn wall had vanished and Fern could plainly see the other side, curve interlocking with curve in an unbroken circumference, the many-rayed star glinting beyond. That can’t be right, she thought suddenly, bewilderment stirring in some recess of her mind. The Gate of Death is supposed to open on another dimension. If it’s outside the world, it
must
be outside the circle. Whatever she’s opening, it isn’t the Gate . . . Forgetting all animosity she tried to cry out in warning, but as in a nightmare she made no sound. Alimond’s many voices climaxed on a single word which turned the fires all to silver, and silver lightnings rippled through the flamecurtain, and both word and light came tumbling earthward like a dying fountain, diminishing into glancing echoes and a falling foam of sparks, and the boundaries were shrunken back to mere lines of brilliance, but set in the Door was a keyhole which shone with a light of its own. Once you have the key you can make the lock, Ragginbone had said. Once you have the lock, you can open the Door. Alimond stepped up to the threshold and, unclosing her left hand, looked down at the key. A tiny lizard scurried over the slats and disappeared into the circle. Abandoning the last of her caution, Fern ran to jump over the fire-lines.

But the circle was sealed, and she had not been called. The power hit her like a forcefield, sending her sprawling to the floor. She got up again, battering on the air as if it were a dungeon-wall, screaming she knew not what; but Alimond was deaf and blind. She leaned forward and inserted the key into the lock. For an interminable second Fern saw her poised thus, the serrated line of her profile knife-edged with light, her long white fingers curling like tentacles round the precious object. “Rozalyn,” she murmured, and Fern knew it was the name of her stillborn daughter, and she was Alys Giddings again, the long-lost peasant-girl starved of love and motherhood for all time. Then she turned the key. There was a quiet click, soft as the fall of a pin, in that instant the only sound in the whole world. Immediately, Fern was aware of an indistinct shape in the circle beyond where the wall should have been, standing so close to the Door it might have been a phantom reflection of Alimond, shadowing her every movement. The key shivered into non-existence even as the Door opened. Fern found she had fallen to her knees; she picked herself up and ran around the star till she was almost behind the witch and could see past her into the widening aperture. Alimond straightened and froze.

The Door had opened onto a vast chamber that seemed to Fern’s dazzled gaze to be lined entirely with gold. After the darkness of the barn she could make out few details, only a glimpse of space and a light like a molten sunset on gilded pillars and shining floor. And opposite Alimond, her rigid stance exactly imaging that of the witch, was a woman with a golden face, not unlike hers but immeasurably more beautiful. Her black hair was twisted into a column on top of her head; her clothes clung and shimmered. In her right hand she held a knife from which the blood still dripped, in all that golden vista the only red. Atlantis, Fern thought, as the truth dawned. This is the Forbidden Past. Zohrâne, like Alimond, tried to unlock the Gate of Death, and like Alimond she was cheated. The key called to itself. All they’ve found is each other. The two women stood, and stared, and did not move.

Fern shifted her position, straining to see more of the background. She thought there were other people waiting outside the circle, tall figures in robes with a metallic luster. And on the floor behind the priestess-queen there was a crumpled, fallen thing the size of a child, its cheek pressed into a scarlet pool. Fern went suddenly cold. “Death,” Alimond said, and her voice was altered almost beyond recognition, husky with confusion. “Where is Death? I wanted
Death
.”

“Have it,” said the other, though Fern realized afterward that she had spoken in Atlantean. Fury distorted the beautiful visage—the fury of an obsessive balked of the ultimate goal, an all-powerful dominatrix denied the last gamble of power. She hurled the knife to the ground and raised her hand in a gesture similar to one of Alimond’s but far more assured, careless with practice, reckless with force. The witch, benumbed with failure, did not seem to register the threat. But before Zohrâne could utter the lethal words the golden hall went suddenly dark. Little noise filtered through the Door but a muted groundswell of sound had been gradually encroaching on Fern’s hearing, and now it grew to a rushing, booming roar that obliterated not only speech but thought. A huge shadow stretched across that shining world, chasing the last of the light. Through the murk Fern glimpsed blurred images of panic; Zohrâne looked up, over her shoulder, and in the glimmer of the fire-lines a fear showed on her face where no fear had dwelt before, unfamiliar as ugliness. Too late, Fern understood. This was Atlantis—Atlantis at the End.
Shut the
Door!
she told Alimond, crying not with her voice but with her mind.
For God’s sake—shut the Door!
But the witch’s mind was empty, a vacant hollow where even desolation had moved out. The ground heaved like water: a seismic ripple raced toward the Door, shaking it loose from its frame, bursting the bounds of the spell, scattering circle and forcefield. The floor of the barn bunched and split; Fern barely outran the tremor as she reached the exit, wrestling with lock and bolt, flung outside on the crest of the earthquake as the building shuddered free of joist and hinge. And then the sea came, sweeping away both witch and witchcraft, exploding from the barn in a gigantic wave which picked Fern up and sent her rolling over and over like a pebble, down the hillside into nothingness.