Tanglewreck (28 page)

‘Get back!’ shouted Roger, trying to shield Buddleia and Ruth.

‘I’m going to find the Timekeeper,’ said Silver again.

The sky darkened. Black clouds came so low over the house that the tall chimneys were hidden. The thunder boomed across the sky. Forked lightning, swift and snakelike, flashed from the clouds to the ground.

It was day no longer. Twin stars broke the sky. As each star fell, Silver heard voices calling. ‘Where are you? Where are you?’ One star exploded into the light, the other vanished in darkness. The lost voices could still be heard, faint and pleading. ‘Where are you?’

The rain came. Rain like spears. All anyone could do was to lie flat on the ground as the rain bombarded their bodies. Then the quiet river at the bottom of the garden rose and reared and hit the house with such force that Silver, looking up, thought the house had been swept away.

As she looked up, she saw Maria Prophetessa in the form of a serpent, huge and old, towering in the flood of the river, her head bent towards Silver.

‘I’m going to find the Timekeeper!’ yelled Silver, holding on to the sundial with both hands as the water fell down in a great wave, its force sucking her through the black storm, through the stars, through Time. She held on.

Lifting her head against the water pouring off her body
like stars, she saw Maria Prophetessa rear up once more, collapse, and slither away.

There was silence. The clouds lifted. The day broke through the darkness. The river returned to its banks. She heard a bird. Voices came in and out of hearing. She stood up. She ran over to her parents and Buddleia.

Silver felt the lines of their world beginning to wobble and shift. She hugged her parents and her sister.

‘Buddleia – will you stay here?’

Buddleia nodded without saying anything. She was crying.

‘Mum, Dad, I’m sorry. I do love you, I don’t really understand what’s happening, but she was tricking me again, that’s what she does, trick people, and terrible things are happening in our other world, and, and, I don’t know why, but I have to find the Timekeeper, and I
am
the Timekeeper. Maybe I’ll find a way back one …’

But already her words were thinning into the air, and she couldn’t hear what her mother was saying as she held her tight, and their bodies became more and more insubstantial, and Tanglewreck itself was losing a window and a door and a hedge and a fountain, and the world she longed for was transparent as a raindrop, or her tears.

So there they were, on the unmown grass, her and Gabriel, and Toby and the kids, not knowing anything that was happening, or where they were, and Abel Darkwater had disappeared and Regalia Mason had disappeared, and Silver
knew exactly what she had to do.

She went to the sundial, and pushed it with all her strength. It began to scrape and move backwards, and there, underneath, was a stairway, and on the third step was a box, and in the box was the Timekeeper.

The Timekeeper. At last. Centuries. Stars.

She lifted it out, jewelled and dusty.

She opened it, and touched the wheels, moving one against the other, like other worlds.

There were the pictures, lapis and gold; the chariot, the lovers, the wheel of fortune, the world … and the child at the End of Time. It was a picture of her.

The clock wasn’t ticking, two of the pictures were missing, and there was only one hand on the dial. Carefully, Silver felt in her pockets, and first of all she put the pictures in place, one by one, and then she took out the diamond pin. She clicked the hand into place on the enamelled dial, and there was a hesitation, and then the clock started to tick.

TICK!

In London, Abel Darkwater heard it and lay down in his twilight study, the blinds drawn. He had failed to sacrifice the child. If she had set the clock in motion once again, and he had taken it from her, and offered her to the dark gods, the mysteries of Time would have been his. Now there was nothing.

TICK!

At the airport, Regalia Mason was boarding her private jet. There had been no more of the Time Tornadoes and Time was as steady again as most people expected it to be. Quanta’s assistance was no longer required by the perplexed scientists of the West, and the sinister man from MI5 was thinking of looking a bit deeper into Quanta himself.

She could not use the future to distort the present; now that the Timekeeper was ticking again, it would regulate the last few hundred years of ordinary Time, and the birth of the new god would remain a mystery. Perhaps the Quantum would become all-powerful, but perhaps it would not.

Nothing is solid, nothing is fixed. The future forks with new beginnings and different ends.

She thought about it; if the child had not begun the journey, the Timekeeper would never have been found. If the child had done what Regalia Mason had predicted she would do, and stayed with her parents and her sister in a happy free world, not like this one at all, then the prophecy would have been fulfilled very differently.

Abel Darkwater had never understood the importance of the child and the decisions she would make.

But then, Regalia Mason, who always read the small print, had overlooked the simplest thing of all; that one true heart can change everything.

TICK! She heard it beating.

At Tanglewreck, Gabriel and Silver had been amazed to see
Micah and Balthazar and the Throwbacks emerging from the steps under the sundial.

‘We have come with food,’ said Eden. ‘Vindaloo, korma, saffron rice.’

‘Yippee!’ shouted Toby, and the kids fell upon the food, shouting and celebrating, and hugging each other and the Throwbacks and Silver.

‘Party!’ yelled Toby. ‘This is the best! The total best!’

‘But how did you get here, and under the sundial?’ asked Silver, bewildered.

‘All things connect,’ said Micah simply. He held the clock in his hands, and stroked it lovingly, telling Silver again how he had worked on it all through the long sea-voyage.

‘I never knew its power,’ he said, ‘but I knew what power it had.’

While they were talking, they hardly noticed a bedraggled pair of thieves climbing wearily up from the hole, followed by a man in pantaloons with a red beard.

‘My clock!’ said the man, looking delightedly at the Timekeeper. ‘Roger Rover at your service.’

‘I think you’re in the wrong century,’ said Silver.

‘I think I’m in the wrong life,’ said Thugger. ‘Can you lend us a few quid to get back to London? Fisty ’ere needs to see a man about a dog.’

Fisty emptied the dead Elvis on to the grass.

‘I reckon I can fix him for you,’ said Micah.

And the day went on. Micah offered to take Toby and the
kids back down to London, if they would go through the tunnels. The kids were so excited about seeing their parents again, and Silver had to try hard not to cry. She kept hoping that Roger and Ruth and Buddleia would be sitting out on the lawn when she looked, but she knew that they wouldn’t be there.

‘Thazzit then, Silver,’ said Toby, as Micah began to round up the kids. ‘This is my mobile number, yeah?’

‘Yeah, Toby, thanks. Thanks for everything.’ She hugged him.

‘You call me and you come down to Brixton, yeah?’

She nodded, too full of feeling to say what was in her heart.

The kids set off down the tunnels in single file, led by Balthazar, with Eden bringing up the rear to keep them safe.

It was almost night.

‘Excuse me,’ said a familiar voice. There was Mrs Rokabye.

‘You are not my aunt,’ said Silver, in a voice that told Mrs Rokabye the game was up.

‘No, well, strictly speaking that is true, but when I read in the paper of the mysterious disappearance of your poor parents, and your obvious difficulties, I wanted to make myself useful. I have always loved children, you know.’

Silver didn’t know.

‘And I didn’t have anywhere to live.’

‘Oh no …’

‘And Bigamist … here he is, yes, he is quite reformed, the
best of rabbits, all repentence and good deeds from now on – that’s right, Bigamist, isn’t that right?’

Bigamist had a carrot in between his teeth. He dropped it humbly at Silver’s feet. It was true he had stolen it from her vegetable garden in the first place, but, well, perhaps …

Mrs Rokabye was wringing her hands. ‘It was all that wicked man Darkwater, you know. He hypnotised me, he threatened me, and … you will need someone to cook and clean for you until you get older, and …’

Sniveller came loping forward.

‘And if you say no, I shall have to marry this man.’

Sniveller looked hopeful.

And in a world of all possible outcomes, somewhere Mrs Rokabye is married to Sniveller, and somewhere she has never met Silver or been to Tanglewreck, and the train is still moving towards London, and Roger and Ruth will come home to this house in this world, and …

TICK!

Micah was speaking very seriously to Gabriel. He came over to Silver and bowed to her.

‘What you have done, none but you was able to do. Thank you, Child of Time.’

‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ said Silver. ‘You rescued me, you looked after me, you gave me the map – oh, here it is.’ She fished in her pockets and gave it back to Micah. ‘You held on to Gabriel in the Black Hole, and you
kept reminding me about her, Regalia Mason. I know she’s bad but I wanted to believe her. She made me trust her.’

‘She be skilled in all the arts,’ said Micah. ‘Only you has she not deceived.’

He turned to Gabriel. ‘You know all the ways and where we shall always be. Shall you return with us, or shall you remain here?’

Gabriel looked at Micah and looked at Silver, then he walked away awhile, and the two of them were deep in talk. Silver watched them, her heart heavy. She would be alone for a long time now. Years. Until she grew up.

My name is Silver. I have lived at Tanglewreck all of my life, which is to say, eleven years
.

My name is Silver. I have lived at Tanglewreck all of my life, which is to say until this time happened, but what happens now, I do not know
.

Night came. Silver was sitting alone in the dark on the grass damp with dew. She was thinking about her mum and dad and her sister, and wanting them to be happy in the world she couldn’t find any more.

She looked up at the stars. Ora was there and Dinger the cat, and lives so far away from hers that they would never touch again. And lives so near hers that they could almost touch. So many lives, and this night and these stars.

The Timekeeper was in the house, ticking through Tanglewreck like a heartbeat. Her own heart was beating too
fast. Sometimes you have to do something difficult because it is important. But it still hurts, and you still cry.

She heard a noise behind her. It was Gabriel. He sat down and put his arm round her.

‘I will stay here with you,’ he said.

‘But you have to live underground.’

‘Not now. I can live here with you. Shall I stay with you?’

‘I’d like that, Gabriel. I don’t know what happens next.’

And they sat together all through the night until the morning came, and she thought she saw three suns rising, and she thought that whatever happened next, she had done the task that had been given to her to do, and that is as much as anybody can do, in this strange life of ours.

Thanks to everyone at Bloomsbury, especially Sarah Odedina and Georgia Murray. To Caroline Michel, Suzanne Gluck, and the William Morris team. To Leah Schmidt, at The Agency. To Philippa Brewster and Henri Llewelyn Davies for their detailed reading, and to Lysander Ashton, quantum physicist and film-maker, who checked the science, and to my godchildren, Eleanor and Cara Shearer, who checked the science fiction. To Fiona Shaw who was always Mrs Rokabye as I was writing. And to Deborah Warner for the generous loan of her parents, Roger and Ruth, a house full of antiques, and a sense of possibility.

Also by Jeanette Winterson
The King of Capri

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney

First published in Great Britain in July 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY

First published in the USA in July 2006 by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Text copyright © Jeanette Winterson 2006
The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4088 2538 9

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