The Kind Folk (17 page)

For an instant he glimpses the face he left on the floor in Terence's room—the face that's still lying there in fragments. He makes himself search for the name in Page's text, where the source is acknowledged at the end of the chapter: John Strong, unpublished papers archived in Liverpool Record Office. That's a department of the central library, and at least some of the entries in Terence's journal are finally clear; he didn't leave papers in a library after all. Should Luke consult Strong's? He hopes he won't need to, and he scrolls down to the next chapter, The Last Gift. He has hardly started reading when he utters a sound that makes the students stare at him.

Page begins skeptically enough. The legend of the changeling—an inhuman or demonic baby substituted for a human one soon after birth—has been rationalised as a means of rejecting children who were born unhealthy or deformed. The supposed changeling tended to be stunted or unusually frail, and most of them died before their eighth birthday. "Perhaps these were indeed no more than sickly children," Roland Franklyn observed, "or did the Fair Ones leave them as distractions from the Gifts that flourished? Those quickly learned to pass for human by imitating traits they observed, a camouflage as innate as the chameleon's. Many displayed their talent for mimicry, while quite a few gained fame with it. Some parents came to suspect that their grown children had never been human but dared not acknowledge the possibility, which might well have seen the family ostracised if not persecuted. They kept the secret so close that it scarcely even passed into legend. Only a few may have confessed it on their deathbeds, where they would refer to it as the Gift for fear of offending the Fair..."

It's just drugs talking, Luke tells himself. To think otherwise feels too close to reverting to his childhood state. Franklyn names no sources, and if he did that would only mean they're folk tales, not the truth. There's no need for Luke's mind to grow unstable just because Franklyn's obviously was. What else did Page imagine was worth quoting? "As science robs religion of its dominance, so the faithful may swarm to embrace other beliefs," Peter Grace predicted. "What charms whose true purpose has been forgotten or disguised may the ignorant employ? Some unwary supplicants have been known to use the old spell to impregnate the barren. Few might have recourse to it if they understood that beneath its disguise it was designed to invite the Gift of the Kind Folk ..."

Luke starts to shake his head, a spasm that feels capable of overwhelming the rest of him. He isn't mindful where his gaze has strayed until the student facing him demands "What's your problem?"

"What's it got to do with you?" his friend mutters at Luke.

He means stealing someone else's thoughts. Presumably the other student is up to that too, since he adds "Why don't you stick to your own stuff and never mind about us."

"That's it, stay with the fairies."

The student opposite Luke smirks. "What's he been doing?"

"Looking at a lot of fairy stuff when somebody could be using the terminal to work."

This, along with a good deal else, is too much for Luke. "Using it to steal other people's work, you mean, like you both are."

"Who are you calling a thief?"

"You want to watch who you are," his friend opposite says, no longer smirking.

"Tell me your names and I'll tell everyone who 1 am."

Luke hardly knows what he's saying, let alone what his words may mean. Isn't he a thief as well? At the very least he steals people's traits and puts them on show, but he feels responsible for worse than that. He takes the computer offline, blotting out the Arcane Archive but none of the thoughts it has lodged in his head, and is shoving back his chair when the young woman seated opposite his neighbour says "You aren't going to complain about him, are you? He isn't really homophobic."

Luke is so confused he feels as though he's spreading chaos, and then he understands. "I haven't got time to complain," he says and stumbles away from the desk.

His neighbour stares at Luke's hands. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Luke has no idea what kind of gesture he made, though he intended it for conciliation. He clenches his fists without glancing at them and leaves the computer room at not much less than a run. Perhaps just his look makes more than one librarian stare at him, but he feels as if they've found him out in some way he's desperate not to learn. As he dodges through the crowd outside he could imagine he has emerged into a foreign land, where the people are quite unlike him. He's almost out of the street market when he catches sight of the bookstall.
Make Tour Life Magic
is still there, and
The Little Mermaid.
They seem to resemble phrases in the punch line of a joke, and he's its victim—the victim of a joke that is the world around him.

IT RETURNS

As soon as Luke reaches the car he retrieves the journal from the boot and dumps it on the bonnet. Beyond the car park an express train rushes like a gale through the station, but around him the air is as still as the deserted sky appears to be. A woman who has just parked her car gives him a long look, surely only because she wonders what the ledger may contain, and then she hurries onto the enclosed bridge across the tracks. "Come and see," Luke is almost maddened enough to shout after her. "See if you can see what's here." He might be worse than distressed if anybody did, and he crouches over the journal. He only wishes he didn't have to read it himself.

Were Terence's summaries of fairy tales meant to convey secrets or to keep them? Here's an entry Luke overlooked—
HANDS GET MORE POWERFUL WHEN MOON DOES
—and he hopes it was simply inspired by the piece of ironwork Terence took home. He leafs through the journal so fast that he dislodges a pressed flower. He could fancy that it was an insect he disturbed; the desiccated twigs on either side of the withered stem appear to twitch as the souvenir drops to the concrete. Before he can examine it, not that he has much desire to, it vanishes under the car. If it was meant to mark an entry, that was
LIKE DREAMS
or
NOT MY DREAMS.
Terence didn't mention dreams until he brought the sculpted face home from John Strong's house, after which he learned about the papers in the library and, Luke deduces, copied something from them. The next entry is
SAYS IT BRINGS BLESSING.
Luke would be happy to leave this uninterpreted, along with
JUST LIKE PRAYING.
He turns the pages faster but can't avoid reading.
FREDA RADIENT. LIT FROM INSIDE. BIGGER AND BRIGHTER. LUCIUS + LUCIA COME FROM LIGHT. LUCAS HERE
.

He feels watched, found out, although he's alone in the car park. No face has dodged out of sight into the enclosed bridge; the impression didn't even resemble much that he would call a face. Down on the tracks a stationary train ticks like a clock if not a bomb. He yearns to be with Sophie, but he's afraid she will sense a change in him before he can grasp it himself. Whatever nearly surfaced in his childhood feels much closer now: some sort of explosion of his mind. He slams the ledger so hard that he might be trying to crush all its significance out of existence. He's tempted to consign it to the nearest bin, except that the notion that someone might read it fills him with undefined shame. He drops it in the boot, and as he slams the lid his mobile begins to sing the song that was Terence's secret joke.

Luke snatches out the phone and sees Sophie's number. His finger hovers over the keypad as he realises he has no idea what to say to her. Suppose she has something urgent to tell him? Even if she hasn't, how can he leave her wondering why he won't answer? He jabs the key but can't speak until she says "Are you there, Luke? Don't try and talk if you shouldn't."

He could use this as an excuse if it weren't obscurely ominous. "Why shouldn't I?"

"If you're on the road."

"I'm just about to be."

"Oh good. Don't let me hold you up if you'd like to get going."

"I don't mind talking for a few minutes." Even this seems capable of betraying his unease, and so Luke blurts "How was your gig yesterday?"

"They all seemed to enjoy it, little Maurice too. Maybe he'll grow up to be a dancer." Having waited in case Luke wants to respond, she says "And how was yours last night?"

'Just what you'd expect, me pretending to be what I pretend to be." He heads off any response by asking "Is everything all right at your end?"

"My end is fine. Sorry, I should leave the jokes to you." After a pause that might be inviting one she says "Dr Meldrum's secretary did call."

Luke draws a breath so fierce it seems to attract all the sounds around him: the ticking of a dormant train, the gasp of a lorry that has halted on the road, a footstep or something like one on the bridge. "Why," he has to ask, "what's wrong?"

"Oh, Luke, don't worry. Nothing at all that I'm aware of. She said he was just wondering if you'd found out any more about your parents."

"Any more," Luke says and swallows, "than what?"

"Than that they weren't Freda and Maurice, I suppose."

"That's all I've got to tell him."

"I said you'd have been in touch if there was anything new. I mean you'd tell me if there was."

"What do you think?" Luke says and is acutely conscious of pretending that's an answer.

"You haven't had a chance to look any further, or you didn't turn anything up?"

"Nothing that means anything to us," Luke says, though it's more like a prayer.

"That's what I meant." All the same, Sophie pauses before saying "Anyway, guess where we are."

"You and, and our forthcoming event, you mean." Luke is afraid she'll wonder why he stumbled over referring to their baby, and hastens to ask "Where?"

"At Terence's house."

He hasn't time to take a breath. "What are you doing there?" he demands not quite before his voice gives out.

"Just some of what needs to be done, Luke."

"Yes," he says more urgently, "but what?"

"Getting it ready for whatever we decide to do."

Her vagueness brings him close to panic. "You don't have to do any of that by yourself."

"I thought I was giving you less to do."

How can he warn her when he can't define his fear? "Suppose you hurt yourself on something," he says, almost relieved to have thought of it. "You could be infected, the state of that place."

"I don't think I'm that clumsy even just now. Are you worried because it isn't only me?"

For a panicky moment Luke wonders who is with her in the house, and then he realises. "That's it," he says not much less than eagerly. "You can't be too careful with little Maurice."

"Don't you think that's what I'm being? He can't help getting in the way a bit, but he's really no hindrance."

"He needs you more than the house does," Luke says in desperation. "You don't want to be tiring yourself."

"Honestly, Luke, he isn't taking much out of me. I don't think I've felt much better in my life."

This isn't reassuring; it's just another of her arguments Luke can't think how to surmount. As he searches for a reason that she won't be able to dismiss for her to leave the house, she says "Anyway, we're done here for today."

"Lock up and head for home, then, and I'll be on my way as well." He only wishes he were as close to home as Sophie is. "Be careful on your way out," he can't help adding.

"I'm already out, Luke."

He feels as though he has played a bad joke on himself. He's about to acknowledge it with a laugh, even if he can't predict what kind, when Sophie says "I suppose you were right about one thing."

Luke isn't sure how much he wants to learn "What was that?"

"I was a bit clumsier than usual, I'm afraid. I broke something. I'm awfully sorry, Luke."

"All I care about is that you're in one piece." Presumably she thinks she broke the plaque of John Strong's face. He doesn't like to imagine her alone with it, but at least she isn't now. "None of that stuff can be worth much," he says. "I don't think it would even mean much to anyone but Terence."

"This might have."

"Well, I can live without knowing, can't you?" When she doesn't answer he says "Which piece of junk was it?"

"It was in the room where he kept his souvenirs. I only meant to tidy it away for safety. I was going to put it on the desk and it just fell apart in my hands. It must have been awfully delicate."

"Never mind," Luke says with some urgency. "You aren't telling me which it was."

"I'm not sure what you'd call it. I thought it looked Oriental." Sophie hesitates and says "Some kind of carving of a skull, only the top looked more like coral."

Luke feels as if reality is about to collapse around him. He remembers how the object that he took to be a sculpture crumbled in his grasp.

Through the phone he hears an approaching rumble that suggests Sophie's words have summoned a presence, and he has to remind himself of the railway above Terence's house. He has found nothing he can say by the time Sophie adds "That's one thing that happened."

"Why," Luke says as his mouth grows drier still, "what else did?"

"Just an encounter I had." She laughs as a preamble to saying "Not in the house. Someone you didn't tell me you met."

This applies to quite a few of Luke's informants, which is one reason he's nervous of asking "Who?"

"The lady from the church."

Perhaps Luke is beyond being reassured just now, and by no means only now. "I didn't think she was worth mentioning."

"You must be the opposite of her, then."

He feels as if he's speaking only because it's expected of him. "In what, in what way?"

"Didn't she want to know your whole life history? She pretty well did mine."

Luke doesn't want to be reminded of his own, but he can't forget by saying "She'd have wanted to know what you were doing at the house."

"She certainly did, and what we are to each other, and even whether we're religious. Because of the baby, that would have been. That's right, little one, we're talking about you." Having drifted away from the phone, Sophie's voice returns. "Did she say anything to you about Terence?"