In the still air belowdecks, in the close and musty space that had been his cell for the past six months, he was the first to notice the smell of burning pitch. The fire started slow, and with a chill night wind howling down the river the sailors above making ready to dock had no advance warning. Through the sturdy wooden door he could hear the commotion as the cry went up to abandon ship, could hear the bodies splashing into the water as people leapt to safety, could hear the screams of those few the flames would not suffer escaping.

Beneath what was left of his shirt he was all ribs, and the looseness of the chains around his wrists left no doubt as to the fact that he was a weakened man, but for all these months it had been the sea that had been his true captor, not this cell nor even the crew. He wearily climbed to his feet and steadied himself against the rocking as the ship began to take on water. With a swift flick and a tug he tore his chains from their anchor in the floor, stretching the life back into his limbs as he did so. A solid kick was all the impetus the door needed to join its fellow timbers burning in the hallway outside. There was no path to the decks save through the flames, and so through the flames he went. By the time he reached open air his clothes burned and his flesh bubbled. The deck was listing to one side – down towards the sailors flailing and calling to each other in the darkness – he ran upwards instead and dove over the side, away from the sailors and away from the rescuers just now setting out from the docks, down and down he dove into the freezing black water. There was no sign of him for one minute, then two, until he broke the surface near the far bank and hauled himself out of the water and onto his back on the cold rocks.

He didn’t have to look to know She was there, watching from somewhere in the shadows piled under crates and nets along the dockside. She had been there, too, half a world away, when they had bound him in chains and heaved him bodily into the hold of the ship. And just as surely, She would be gone when he woke.

The house was nestled snugly at the base of the valley. There the trees crowd closely around the grounds, holding in the creeping fog and drifting wood smoke. In the pre-dawn light a pair of small brown eyes watched the house, unmoving, blinking from time to time, and they in turn were watched.

Peter’s breath condensed on the inside of his bedroom window, obscuring his view of the grass and trees below, the small greenhouse, and the old groundskeepers’ cottage, ruined and disused now, and overrun with creepers. He rubbed his eyes, doubting now that he had seen anything. The pocket watch on his bedside table showed 5 a.m. There was plenty of unpacking to be done later in the day, but for the moment he would much rather sleep.

His mother felt at home in that large house. It was her ancestral home, dating back past World Wars and Civil Wars; and though she had grown up in the city she had summered there every year until she had married his father. His father would no doubt have loved the place. He would have treasured the hidden corners and spaces that had not seen the light of day for years. Then again, if his father was still alive they would never have moved here in the first place. His sense of honour had been too strong to let his family rely on his wife’s inheritance, and a man of his nature couldn’t support a family in the country. As it was, Peter had rarely been far from the hustle and bustle of the city – and never for long. The spaces between the trees seemed dark and sinister, yet they called to something within him long hidden. The dusty rooms, filled with vast tracts of space held an air of expectancy. It was almost as though the house had been waiting for them – waiting for their feet to track prints through the thick layers of dust, and eventually for their hands to make everything clean again.

By their second evening in the house they had staked out a space for themselves in the wilderness of empty rooms. The fire in the grate played its light over the newly dusted surfaces. The kitchen benches gleamed black and white in lamplight and moonlight. The copper veins of the ancient refrigerator lay dormant – the electricity wouldn’t be connected until the following morning, bringing with it that background hum that seemed so absent in the flickering stillness. Upstairs their bedrooms were the only rooms fully unpacked – their possessions looking strangely at home in the foreign surroundings. Everywhere else the corners were stacked high with cardboard boxes – knickknacks and furniture and things they didn’t really need but could hardly throw away.

“I’m picking grandma up from the train station this morning,” his mother said at the breakfast table the next morning. “You could have slept in, you know. You are on holidays, after all.”
“There are still a lot of boxes to be unpacked,” he shrugged.
“Leave them, Peter. Take a walk or something instead. We did hire a housekeeper for a reason; besides, everything important is already unpacked.”
“Okay.”
“Good,” she smiled as she stacked the dishes on the sink. “I’ll be a few hours. I have to run some errands while I’m in town.”

Outside the mist had been burnt away by the rays of the morning sun. The tumbled stonework of the back patio was losing ground to the creeping weeds and the long grass that formed a verge before the first trees. Peter picked his way carefully across the battlefield and crossed to the tree line. He glanced over his shoulder at is bedroom window. Here was the spot he had seen the eyes the previous morning. Or thought he had. The only thing for certain was that there was nothing here now. Nothing but what may or may not have been a track leading away between the trees. He checked his pocket watch and, with the ignorant innocence of someone who had never been alone in the wilderness, set off down the path. Soon the twists and turns had hidden the house from view and the trees surrounded him. At least the track seemed to know which way he was headed, and which way led back home.

After what seemed like hours, though his watch protested, the track led to a forest glade, and there she was. She sat, cross-legged, dressed in a white nightgown from her neck to her ankles. Unmoving, she was, like a mushroom amongst the leaf litter. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed locked in concentration. For a moment the trees seemed to lean in, menacing. A frown flashed across her features, then she visibly relaxed, and her green eyes flickered open. The trees shrank back.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“No one,” he replied, regretting it instantly. “My name is Peter.”
A look (Relief? Disappointment?) flickered on her face, and she sighed, “That’s a very ordinary name. I’m Emily.”
He considered protesting but changed his mind, asking instead “What are you doing?”
“Trying to be somewhere else.”
“Is it working?”
“Obviously not,” she huffed, clambering to her feet.
The sound of a snapping branch echoed through the trees, and she gasped, spinning all about. Peter noticed the dirt and dead leaves clinging to her nightgown where she had been sitting on it. He opened his mouth to tell her, but at that moment there was the almighty sound of something crashing through the undergrowth.
She gasped again, and hissed, “They mustn’t find me!”
The sound was closer now, and the trees once more seemed to close in. Peter turned in the direction of the disturbance as a small white doe burst from between the trees and landed in the clearing, feet skittering to a halt on the loose dirt. There was silence for the space of a heartbeat, perhaps two, as Peter and the creature locked brown eyes. Then, the spell broken, it turned and was gone. Peter breathed a sigh of relief then span back around. The glade was empty. He was alone.

2004

It rained; an interminable kind of drizzle that walled the world in a sodden curtain, and roofed it in overcast grey. It was a melancholy sort of downpour – barely a distant cousin to a thunderstorm, dark and angry, that charges the air, and stands hair on its end; certainly no more than a distant ancestor of a summer shower, warm and welcoming; a suppressive, unassuming sort of rain that feigns innocence but manages to permeate everything with its uncomfortable damp. Even could one manage to escape it, they would fall prey to the light that came with it: cool, grey, and above all, wet. It was weather that persuaded heartily against activity, especially the hypaethral variety. Nonetheless, under the rooftops, and under the rain drops, things were happening. And, above it all, it rained.

Brincke Parsons stood in the lee of the palace wall. His head and shoulders were hunched and folded deep amongst the shadows contained therein a smouldering spark could be seen, were there any to see it. Time passed. With a swish, and a helpful boost from masonry long in need of repair, Brincke disappeared over the wall. In his wake he left nothing but a small dry patch – long gone before the patrolling guard came across it. Across the dimness of the palace grounds his shadow flitted. It weaved between trees, skirted the large fountain, and continued up the sheer face of the main building to be lost in the gathering gloom.

Flickering fireflies fluttered flightily about Fredrick Fergusson’s feet. The librarian smiled to himself, noting the alliteration in the notebook that rested in his breast pocket. Far above, the sweeping glass panes of the palace arboretum’s dome pittered and pattered with the falling rain. Fergusson rarely left the library lately – his musty nest of spidery text ensconced in brittle, yellowing pages. The three tomes beside him on the springy turf he had chosen at random from his desk on as much of a whim as that which had guided his feet to this place. He picked the top one up and started reading where it fell open. After a minute a frightening suspicion dawned on him, made all the more frightening by what he had just read. A quick glance at the front cover was enough to confirm it – this was not a book he had ever seen in his ten years as the palace librarian.

The shelf labelled ‘L’ was missing one book. There was not even a space for it between ‘Lo’ and ‘Lu’ – there was no point denying it. Certainly no point looking for a third time. He had even checked the librarian’s desk, tracking his sodden footfalls up and down the aisles. The desk lay overturned now, papers and books strewn across the floor. Brincke swore under his breath. He didn’t have time for this. Somewhere out in the city, soaked to the skin, She was waiting for him. Fergusson could at least have had the decency to be at his desk – now Brincke had to find him and the book.

She shivered with the cold, pulling her threadbare cloak tightly around her for what little protection it afforded her from the rain, which grew steadily heavier. Brincke was late. That wasn’t like him. The book must be causing trouble again.

Heat rising from the kitchens and the laundry room kept the arboretum lush; almost subtropical. The cool breeze that played over Fergusson’s supine form now was thus quite welcome… and quite puzzling – so puzzling, in fact, that it distracted him from the greater but less immediate puzzle of the strange book and what to do about it. He climbed to his feet and followed the rustling of leaves, away from the path and out of the range of the light cast by the standing torches. It did not cross his mind how out of character this was – it didn’t even cross his mind that it should have crossed his mind. Presently he stepped into a clearing, and a deluge of water. No need anymore to wonder about the breeze, or that roaring sound that had been assaulting his ears – someone had opened one of the service hatches, letting in the cold and the water running down the outside of the dome. Who would do such a thing in this weather? And… wait… why had he left the book behind?

From his perch low in the boughs of a towering oak, Brincke could see the book. Fergusson, however, was not where he had been lying scant minutes before when Brincke had spied him from atop the dome. There was no time to dwell on it. He hit the turf with light feet and soon had the book in his hands.
“Uh… I think you’ll find that’s mine,” came a voice from behind him.
“Yours, Fergusson? Wouldn’t it belong to the King, given that it came from the palace library?”
“Yes… well… it certainly doesn’t belong to you, in any case.”
“Well, regardless, I think I’ll take it off your hands anyway,” Brincke was glad that his hood kept him from being recognised. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
Fergusson stepped forward and placed his hand on Brincke’s chest, halting his advance. “What do you want with the book?”
“That’s not the question you should be worried about. What does the book want with you?”
Fergusson looked confused, and slightly worried.
Brincke pressed the point – he knew Fergusson was an intelligent man. “Take walks out here often, do you? With strange books you’ve never seen before?”
“You know what’s written in there,” said Fergusson. “You’re surprised that I’m not going to let you take it?”
“Surprised? No. Slightly amused, perhaps. But do you really think it wouldn’t suit the book’s purposes quite neatly if we were to both kill each other and it were to drop out of knowing?”
“You can’t fool me! If it really can control me then it can control you as well!” Fergusson raised his fists.
“Something much greater controls me, Fergusson.”
“And it wants the book, eh? Well it will be sorely disappointed!” So saying, he lunged at Brincke. But Brincke was ready. He span deftly out of the way of the well-placed fist and delivered a cracking blow to the back of Fergusson’s head.
“Sorry, old chap. You’ll have a hell of a headache in the morning, but at least you’ll be alive.”

It was a thirty foot drop from the palace eaves to the grounds below, but Brincke couldn’t afford the time it would take to climb down; so he jumped. His feet hit the ground hard, sending up a plume of water, his knees giving way to a crouch.
“Halt!”
Brincke rose slowly, his hands in the air and his hood flapping uselessly down his back.
“Turn around!”
He did so.
“Your majesty! My apologies, sir, I had thought you some rogue.”
“Quite alright, good man. It is, after all, what I hire you for.”
“Thankyou, sir!”
Bidding the guard farewell he crossed the grounds and vaulted the wall. Somewhere out in the city, She was waiting.

September, 2004