The Sterkarm Handshake (49 page)

29

21st and 16th

The day was bright and sunny, and Andrea was glad of the strong breeze that blew her hair behind her and kept her face cool as she climbed the steep hillside. The turf under her feet was thick and a rich dark green. Her boots sank into it, and it sprang back, making it a little like walking on a trampoline.

She reached the ridge of the hill, and the wind freshened, feeling colder and damper on her skin, making a lonely moaning past her ears. Below her the land fell away in a long steep slope into the valley that was still marked on her map as Bedesdale. The little river was still called Bedes Water, but it didn't run the course she knew. And, now, a narrow gray road ran beside the river, and a small metal sign pointed the way to the tower. It was “a place of historical interest,” a “heritage site.” Americans and Australians, named Stackam and Starkarm and Stairkarm, came to it looking for their ancestral home.

From the ridge she looked out into a wide sky, blue as harebells, and below it the green hills, all running their long spurs down into the valley. Cloud shadows moved over the slopes, which were still green and brown, but there weren't as many greens, nor were they as vibrant as she remembered. Though the nearest factories and towns were many miles away, still they'd dulled the air.

She said hello to an elderly couple out walking their Yorkshire terrier, and went on remembering two big, loping dogs, like giant, shaggy greyhounds …

The tower stood just below the hill's ridge, built on a craggy rock pile left behind by a glacier. As she walked, the top of the tower came into view, poking over the ridge, and more and more of it could be seen as she drew nearer. It was in better repair than she'd expected, but the night before, she'd read in her guidebook that the owner of the land in the early nineteenth century had repaired and partly rebuilt the tower, to improve the view from his house.

There was no sign of the wall that had once surrounded the tower, or its gatehouse. All the outbuildings that had crowded the yard were gone. There was nothing but the crag, thickly overgrown. Not even a path led up the crag. To reach the tower, she had to scramble over boulders, and through thornbushes and briers and thickets of nettles.

Once on top of the crag, she was shy of approaching the tower. It never had looked welcoming; now there hung about it a forbidding chill of desolation. Instead, she wandered about the top of the crag, kicking amid the undergrowth, trying to find any trace, just one stone, of the wall or gatehouse or outhouses.

There was nothing. Probably, if she searched the countryside around, she'd find field walls and barns and houses built with stones taken from the tower's walls.

She went over to the tower. It seemed smaller and more pinched than she remembered. The great door of wood and nails had gone, and so had the iron grids that had once guarded the door and stairs. There was nothing but a dark, square hole in the stonework. The lintel was so low that she had to duck to enter.

Inside, the windowless ground floor was dark. A twisted rectangle of light was thrown onto the floor by the doorway, with her shadow at its center. The light fell on a rubble of broken stone. It was damp in there, and chill, and she felt afraid of going in, but she made herself.

The stairs opened to the right of the doorway, corkscrewing counterclockwise—it was a Sterkarm tower. The plaster had gone from the stone walls, leaving them cold and damp, the gray gritstone streaked with rusty red.

She climbed the narrow staircase, where dampness hung in the air. The chill and darkness made her look quickly over her shoulder, fearing that someone was behind her. No one was. Her heart beat fast, and she was sad.

At the first turn of the stair, she found her way blocked by a wall of modern concrete blocks and had to turn back. There would be no visiting the hall, or the family's private rooms, or the roof where the watchman had stood guard.

Outside the tower, back in the sunshine, she looked up at the lintel. The keystone over it was carved. Wind and rain had worn the carving almost away, but she knew what it was. Emblazoned on a shield, an upraised arm, a left arm, brandishing a dagger. The Sterkarm handshake.

She sat on a boulder at the edge of the crag and watched a kestrel as it hung over the valley. Below her, out of sight, a car purred by on the road, followed by a noisier truck.

Among the Sterkarms she'd heard many stories of mortals who'd found their way into Elf-Land. Some had been taken there by the Elves, as willing or unwilling captives. Some blundered unknowingly through the barriers that divide Man's-Home from Elf-Land. Others, with unwise curiosity, found their way there by exploring some cave in the hillside, by following the sound of ravishingly beautiful music or chasing down a snow-white, red-eared deer.

Most of the stories had ended with the wanderers being forever lost, nothing of them ever seen or heard again. But a few had told of visitors to Elf-Land who returned. They came home thinking they'd been away for no more than three days or three hours, and found that it had been seven years. They came back to a home still familiar, to a welcoming family who still knew them—but they were as lost as those who never returned.

No mortal food could ease their hunger, no drink their thirst. No company could please them, or music soothe them. They could not sleep or rest, and wandered the hills, searching for the door that opened into Elf-Land. These stories often ended with their vanishing again. Let's hope, the storyteller would say, that they found their way back to the Elf-Land they longed for. But maybe the truth was they'd lain down somewhere in the lonely hills and let the cold take them.

None of the Sterkarms' stories had told the other side; none told of what happened to Elves who ventured into Man's-Home and then returned to Elf-Land. If only she could have reached them again, Andrea could have told the Sterkarms that story.

No company pleased her. In a neat, clean flat, with central heating and electric lights to snap on instantly, she longed for the smoke and soot and stink and squalor of Toorkild's hall, for the dim flickering of candlelight and the reek of burning tallow, for all the difficulty of lighting fires, the throat-­catching smoke and the smell of burning peat.

She missed the noise and jostle and chatter, but when she went to a pub in search of it, she couldn't find it. The music was loud and persistent, but not the same. Her friends talked of boyfriends and television, lectures, essays, films, books—and it wasn't at all the same.

Whenever she wanted clean water, she turned on a tap. She had oranges and bananas, and soft, fresh whole-wheat bread in a plastic wrapper. Everything she ate was tasty and hygienically prepared, but she missed the Sterkarm porridge, heavy bread and small beer.

Her bed was too soft, her room too warm. She didn't sleep well. Awake, she thought of Per and missed him to the point of tears. Every man she met made her think of him, and miss him more.

Asleep, she often dreamed she was in her bower again, laughing with Per in the warm dark under the scratchy blankets, Per's own musk mingling with the thick, sweet smell of old hay that rose from the mattress with their every move—and then she'd wake, snap on her electric lamp and lie, alone, between smooth cotton sheets that smelled of soap powder, on her inner-spring mattress. And she missed Per so much, so much …

… That she'd come here, to Bedesdale, to this ruin.

She knew she shouldn't be there, mooning, with James Windsor still seriously ill in the hospital, with Bryce dead, but …

The sun shone down on the boulders, warming them, drawing the scent from grass and leaves. Silence lay heavy over the hills and seemed to throb gently against the ear, but was underlain by a persistent drone from the distant main road and the occasional closer passing of a car in the valley below. It wasn't the deep, deep silence of the 16th. Per seemed even farther from her than he did in her dreams.

On Christmas Eve, the Sterkarms said, and on May Day, on Midsummer's Eve and Halloween, the barriers between the worlds grew frail as mist and people foolish enough to leave their firesides in the darkling hours, when it was neither day nor night, might pass through the mist between one step and another and, without knowing, leave the mortal world for Elf-Land.

Perhaps if she came back here on Christmas Eve, or May Day, on Midsummer's Eve or Halloween, in the darkling hours, she could stretch her hand out into the dusk, and Per's hand would meet it.

In the same valley, on the other side of the air …

“Here!” Per called. He came back to Joe from among the bawling black sheep, hauling another sheep along by its horns. Swart followed behind him, occasionally sniffing at the sheep, but too well used to them to bite or chase.

“This be my best ewe,” Per said, though how he could pick her out from among all the others was more than Joe knew. Nor how Per had known that he'd find her on this particular hillside. Joe had a lot—well, everything—to learn about sheep. It was frightening how much he had to learn, but exhilarating too. He would learn. He'd be a mug not to put all his energy into learning whatever was needful. Here was his chance for all he'd ever wanted: his own home, a family. And more than he'd ever wanted: property, respect.

Per, still holding the ewe by one horn, rubbed his hand through the thick, greasy fleece. “She be a good mother, this one. Every year for last three years she's had twins and both have lived. Whatever lambs she has this year are thine.”

He'd already promised Joe a young ram and a breeding ewe. Adding the as-yet-unborn lambs made a generous gift, and Per was silent for an eye's blink as he considered the loss to his own flock. But better to be known for generosity than meanness. Every impulse toward meanness should be resisted. Per let the ewe go, looked up and said, “And I'll give thee another breeding ewe besides.”

Per's bruises had faded. Both his eyes were open again, and though one was still surrounded by yellow and brown marks, and the white blood-shot, they were, again, that silvery pale blue. He wasn't quite as pretty as he had been—there was a slight bump in his nose now, and a small dent on one cheekbone—but he was recognizable again as Per May. He gave Joe his big, bright smile.

“Thanks,” Joe said. “It's good of you. Thee. You.” He was never sure how he should address Per. Being a friend, and the younger, made Per “thou.” But being the master to whom Joe had sworn faith made him “you.”

“We be ‘thou' to each other,” Per said. Letting go of the ewe, he came over to Joe and hugged him in the affectionate way of the Sterkarms, which Joe still hoped he'd get used to one day. “But for thee, I'd never have won out of Elf-Land.”

Hugging him back, Joe shook him. “But for thee,
I'd
never have won out of Elf-Land.”

They laughed and sat down, side by side on the hillside. In the valley below, the river ran fast over rocks, and on the farther slope was the black, burned place where the Elf-Gate had stood. The fallen fences had all been cut up and dragged away, but some of the rubble of the broken Tube remained. Joe watched a couple of herdsmen on black horses, carrying long lances, ride at a gallop by the riverside, just for the hell of it. I'll never be able to ride like that, Joe thought, but my son will. The idea both thrilled him and filled him with dread.

Per, beside him, stared and stared at the burned place.

Swart came over to them, sniffing, knocked Per flat on the slope and stood astride him, slapping his face with a long red tongue. Fending Swart off, Per said, “Chyo?”

“Joe. J-J-J. Joe.”

Per, struggling up, hugged Swart, who licked his ear. Nodding, concentrating, Per said, “Cho. What was it like in Elf-Land?”

Joe was dumbstruck by the vastness of the question. It was like being asked what it was like to be alive. “Tha kens what it was like. Tha was there.”

Per stared down the valley, toward where the Elf-Gate had been. “Tha lived there years, Chyo. Cho. Didst hate it?”

Joe considered, raised his brows, considered some more. “Some of it. I loved some of it. Most of it was no too bad. Was no too good. But … There was no place for me, tha kens?” Per stared at him attentively, but Joe doubted that he understood. “It was like music stopped and I'd no chair.” Per frowned, never having played that game. “But I reckon … Yeah, I still reckon I be better off here.”

Swart wandered off, and Per clasped his knees, rested his chin on them and withdrew from the bleating sheep, the damp hillside wind, the cloud shadows and the man beside him, as he gazed toward the hill of the Gate. A Gate he could never find, though he searched behind every blade of grass and every stone …

Staring, his eyes grew wide and unfocused, his mind drifted—and at his ear, so real he felt the puff of air against his skin, Andrea's voice said, “Per …” The very note and timbre of her voice was in it. His head jerked up and he turned—and there was Swart, ears pricking and tail beating on the grass. No Andrea, but—Per turned his head, looking all about.

“What?” Joe asked.

“Nowt,” Per said, uncertainly, still looking around. “Nowt.”

Joe watched tears gather in Per's eyes, sparkle, brim over his lashes and fall down his cheek, and he shook his head. If he lived with the Sterkarms for the rest of his life, he thought, he never was going to feel at home among them.

Maybe, Per was thinking, if he came here in the darkling hours, between night and day … If he came here in the darkling hours of Christmas Eve, when the year turned, and the borders between the worlds grew soft and weak as mist … could he touch her then, as well as hear her? Would the Gate stand open?

“Oh Chyo!”

“What?” Joe said.

“If I had but a swan's wide wings

Far over hills and sea I'd fly—

To my true love's arms I'd fall at last

And in her arms I'd gladly die.”