The Silver Bough (40 page)

“Of course!”

“She looked happy?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t understand.” He tilted his head to one side. “What’s bothering you?”

“If that was Heaven—or wherever Freya is now—how could I see it?”

“I’d guess…well, the normal barriers are down now. Maybe…maybe you’re nervous about coming with me, and your friend wanted to show you there’s nothing to fear.”

She felt dizzy. “So that’s where we’re going? To Heaven?”

He gave her his full attention. “We’re not going to die. Stop worrying.”

“So, I’m not going to die, but I’m going to see Freya again?”

“If that’s your dearest wish, then yes.”

Of course she wanted her best friend back, but that was impossible. As for joining Freya where she was now—that had to mean dying; there could be no other way.

“How?”

He shook his head. “Don’t ask me—it’s magic. This is the year of the golden apple, and anything can happen. It will give you whatever you want the most.”

You don’t know what that is,
she thought.
I don’t even know.
Her mind went blank. Why did she trust this stranger? What was going to happen to her?

“Put your clothes on, love,” he said gently.

Stalling for time, she said, “I’ll take a shower first.”

“You can’t.” He met her glare with a mocking smile. “It’s electric.”

She gave in to the inevitable and went to the dresser to hunt out fresh underwear and a clean tee shirt. The jeans she’d worn earlier, damp and grass-stained as they were, would do.

He sat on the edge of the bed, putting on his socks. She sat down beside him and took a deep breath. “Be honest with me.”

He turned to face her squarely, unsmiling. “Of course.”

“Why did my grandmother run away? Why didn’t she go with you when she had the chance?”

“Her ambitions were worldly. I wasn’t her heart’s desire. Nothing on offer here was. She was more interested in Hollywood than Paradise. She was only nineteen.”

“
I’m
nineteen.”

“I know.” He patted her knee. “Put your shoes on.”

She pulled her leg away, resenting his patronizing attitude. “Tell me what happened. What was she afraid of?”

“She wasn’t afraid,” he said, sounding weary.

“Why did she run away from you?”

“She didn’t run away from
me.
Just from this place. The expectations and limited horizons…”

“Not from you?”

“I’m the one who
helped
her. Who do you think gave her money enough to go to America?”

She gaped at him, abruptly unbalanced, feeling all her preconceptions overturned. “
You
did? I don’t understand…why?”

“We formed an alliance. We were friends—partners—united in the wish to get away—not lovers. She set out to seduce me. I was tempted, sure, and flattered, but I was no despoiler of innocent young virgins, and I had no intention of getting married. When it didn’t work out as she’d planned, she was straight with me, told me what she wanted, and I agreed to help her out. We announced our engagement.

“I don’t know how the Apple Queen was chosen—men didn’t know; it was the women’s business. They chose their representative each year, and of course
she
chose her partner, the man she wished to share the apple with, even though it might appear, to an outsider, to be the other way around. Until nineteen fifty, when the rare golden apple appeared, the first since my mother was the queen, and the powers that be in this town decided that their best interests would be served by using me. I don’t know why it never occurred to them that I cared for most of the local people as little as they cared for me, and that the winning of
my
heart’s desire might not be in their best—”

She interrupted. “But you didn’t eat the apple! So you didn’t get your heart’s desire, so—”

”Oh, but I did. My heart’s desire was to get clear of this place
and
take my revenge on it. Phemie didn’t need any magic for hers, either. All she asked was to escape, with the chance to try her luck in Hollywood, and I gave her the money to do just that. We didn’t need a magic apple to give us anything, because going out in the world and getting it for ourselves was what it was all about. Just in case the old stories were true, and our good luck would be shared in by the town, I practiced a bit of sleight of hand and substituted another apple—not even locally grown!—and that was what we ate in front of the crowds.”

His expression hardened. “For once in my life, that night they didn’t hate me. They thought I was finally doing something right. They needed some powerful magic to revive the local economy. If they’d only realized how much I’d done for this town over the years, how much Appleton’s fortunes were tied up with my business, they wouldn’t have been so eager to see the last of me. But I had no intention of leaving my inheritance behind. I planned my escape. I spent months shifting my money around, out of the business, and by the time I left Wall’s Cider was mortgaged to the hilt and the notes were due. There was no money to pay employees, and the orchards had to be sold to pay off the mortgages—sold at a loss because the trees weren’t bearing and nobody wanted them. It was over; all the while they’d been complaining, they’d never realized how good life really had been. Things could only get worse. But not for me—I’d bought myself a new life, to live wherever and however I wanted.”

Watching him, hearing the pain from the past still ringing in his words, she felt her emotions toward him shift and change. He wasn’t the powerful being she’d imagined, and she wasn’t in his thrall. She almost pitied him.

“So why did you come back?”

“I nearly ruined this town—maybe now I can save it.” He stopped and looked searchingly into her face. “I mean, of course,
we
can. This is what I came here for, I know it now, and you were called, too, for the same reason. You felt it.”

She shook her head. It hadn’t been like that for her at all; there’d never been any compulsion. It was all a matter of impulse, drifting, whims, and chance. You went to Scotland because your father gave you the ticket, and you didn’t have anything better to do. Her ties to Appleton were recent and tenuous; she couldn’t get all emotional about it. And as for Ronan, well, he was definitely hot, but that didn’t make him the great love of her life.

But he didn’t want to hear her protests, her second thoughts, her stumbling explanation; none of that mattered. She realized that he didn’t really care how she felt, or what she wanted; he was just using her because he needed a woman, because the magic would not work for him alone. For all she knew, his dearest desire might be death—after all, despite his vigor and youthful appearance, he’d been living in this world for ninety years. And if he was wishing for death and all she could think of was her dead best friend—

He got up and pulled her to her feet.

“Wait!”

He waited.

“Look, I’m just not sure….” She heard how weak she sounded and was annoyed with herself for being so pathetic. After all, she reminded herself, she’d started this. And maybe it was too late to back out. But she needed more encouragement from him.

“Ashley, we’re running out of time.” He gripped her hand more firmly and looked deep into her eyes. “You’re thinking we’re not the great loves of each other’s lives, but we do all right.” He pulled her to him, then, and did what she’d been hoping he’d do. He kissed her long and hard, so she didn’t have to think.

After that, he let her pause just long enough to tie her shoelaces and grab her rucksack before they left the house.

Outside, she was startled by the fog hanging like heavy curtains on all sides. Walking through the weirdly muffled streets they met no one; not another living thing was stirring, only the slow, ominous, wavelike movements of the occluded air. It was like being in the clouds, and as they headed out of town on the main road, it got worse.

The numbing, comforting quality of his kiss had worn off. She was very aware of the chilly touch of the fog, and felt uneasy at the way they were rushing ahead so blindly. She pulled at his arm, trying to get him to slow his pace. “Where are we going?”

“To get the apple, I told you.”

“Where is it?”

“Orchard House.”

“I don’t know where that is.”

He sighed. “On a hill at the edge of town. Can’t you walk a bit faster?”

“Does it have to be that apple?”

“Of course it does. It’s not just symbolic, you know. Eating an ordinary apple wouldn’t—”

“Not an ordinary apple—Phemie’s apple. Would that work?”

He stopped short and pulled her around to face him. “Are you telling me she kept it all these years? And you’ve got it?”

“I’ve got it. It’s all shriveled up—more than fifty years, no wonder!—but it smells heavenly.” She moistened her lips.

He didn’t look delighted, or kiss her as she’d hoped. Instead, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Show me.”

She shrugged off her backpack and reached inside, found it at once, and handed it to him in the folded handkerchief. “I should have told you before. We could have eaten it in bed.” She gazed up at him hopefully, still waiting for her reward, but he only stared at the little parcel in the palm of his hand, his nostrils flaring at the scent.

“Well? Will it do?”

“Yes,” he said flatly. “Of course, this will do. Why not? We’ll eat Phemie’s apple, and we don’t go back to
her
orchard—let her eat her own apple; let her share it with whomever she will.”

She felt her hackles rise with possessive jealousy. “Her? Who are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

“But I
do
mind—”

“Forget it; come on.” He pulled her along, not even pausing when she stumbled.

“But where are we going?”

“We need a doorway.”

“What do you mean? What kind of doorway?” She felt breathless, trying to keep up with him.

“Like the one my mother used—in fact, it might as well be the same one. It’s not far now.”

W
HEN
N
ELL LEFT
the library in the strange, murky half-light that seemed to belong properly neither to day or to night, she felt more powerfully alive and sure of herself than she had in years.

Her impulse was to hurry, but she forced herself to take it easy, driving at a sedate and careful speed through the sleeping streets of the town, determined not to risk an accident. The odd light made everything so uncertain; she kept glimpsing strange shapes and movement from the corners of her eyes, accompanied by the feeling that
something
—animal? human?—was about to dart out into the road, but when she hit the brakes and took a second, sharper look, she saw that the movement came from a plastic bag caught and flapping on a bush, the lurking shape was only a child’s toy lying abandoned in the gutter.

As she turned off the main road onto her driveway her sense of urgency increased. From the top of the hill, in front of her house, she usually had a good view of the sea, but today there was nothing to be seen but thick, white fog. Appleton was thoroughly isolated. This little spit of land, this almost-island, was being claimed—perhaps reclaimed—by a different reality. Was it her fault, had she brought this fate on them all by growing the apple in the first place, then refusing to share it with Ronan?

But how
could
it be her fault, when she’d known nothing about any of it? No, more likely, she’d been used. She’d been the unwitting instrument by which the golden apple could return; then Ronan, who could have had his pick of women in the town, had wanted to use her—and now, although she’d refused him at first out of pride and fear or sheer stubborn will, she’d made up her mind to use
him.

If only it wasn’t too late.

She jumped out of the car and, her heart pounding and breath catching as if she’d already run a mile, she raced around the house, through the garden, across the meadow, and into the familiar close, scented warmth of her walled orchard.

The apple was still there, the smooth golden skin glowing softly out of the shadows. Her deep, heartfelt sigh of relief stirred the thick blossom and sent a few fluttering gently to the ground.