A long, animal sniff. ‘No. Not that one. It’s lost its heart.’
‘Careless.’
‘Given it up to the Crow, I believe.’
A prim little tut. ‘Barbaric.’
Another long, animal sniff. ‘We’ll leave it well alone. It’s pathetic. No kind of tribute.’
‘The other? It’s beautiful enough.’
‘You’d have us take a repudiated changeling back to the queendom? You are tired of the queen’s favour and wish to spend the next hundred years in the sculleries?’
An annoyed sigh. ‘There is sport to be had with such a one, but all right. We’ll leave it.’
The mist begins to glow and they’re there, in front of Kavi, impossibly tall but he is on his knees, looking up into the night at these two, beautiful looming faces with violet eyes gleaming with hunger. It occurs to him now he is exactly where he should be, and he has a fleeting sense thatthe whole day has been leading up to this perfect moment, from the moment he rolled over this morning in his cabin to ducking away from Derek – bless him – to seeing Bella’s legs sticking out from under the props table, to watching Mackie cradle the Pearl, to kneeling here at this grave. A great, awed peace comes upon him. Is this what Belinda’s so afraid of? That we’ll like it? And the thought of Belinda almost makes him smile. Why think of such a person at a time like this? What does she matter now?
But maybe these creatures know Belinda too, he thinks stupidly, because they begin to laugh, and he hopes Michael and the other violinist can hear this at least. It is so loud, the pulse of it thudding and aching in his ears, he hopes they’ve dropped their sodding biscuits and got inside the Grub at last. Great peals of giggles echo on the stone, and Kavi thinks about peals of laughter and peals of bells, the metallic clang of them and what the bell is made of, perhaps bronze. Yes, probably bronze, a fairy metal if there is such a thing, a bronze bell tolling midnight, his midnight, signalling curfew to all without the Grub that it is time to seek shelter, the time has come to go.
Kavi finds himself on his feet, face to face with the creatures, and he has never seen anything so beautiful in all his life. He thinks they’re male but it’s hard to care. All he can think of is their violet eyes and the way they make tunnels, long passages of darkness he’d like to leap into.
There is some kind of shouting behind him, someone making a racket in the Grub and dimly Kavi wonders ifsomeone is coming to rescue him even though Belinda always insists she doesn’t do heroics. One of the creatures leans towards him and takes a long sniff of his neck and his throat, making a long, juddering sound of contentment.
‘But this one, on the other hand. This one might do.’
‘Yes, this one. It calls itself a poet. Thwarted by the Crow.’
‘Poor thing.’
‘We can help it.’
The shouting is right beside him now and someone is trying to push in front of him and knock him down but he is held fast by those twin dark pools edged with violet.
‘Yes.’ And one of the creatures holds out its hand like he’s a child and beckons kindly. ‘Will you come with us, poor little poet? Will you come sing with us awhile?’
And he would like to say no thank you, and he realises that if he says no thank you they will not be able to take him, and for a moment he has the strength to say it, to force out the wordsbut my mother will be all aloneorbut there is a girl in there I was trying to get into bedorall right but I want to come back soon.But the moment of strength passes, draining from his muscles into the mulch and his hand is in the creature’s and it’s cold and smooth, like porcelain, and he murmurs yes, or something like it. Then he is atop a horse and the wind is in his face and he can smell peaches and words are flooding into his mind again, filling him up and up and up and up.
***
Just before midnight and the cast and crew ofThe Apple and the Pearlare aboard their train, not a one among them still dawdling among the dark graves or lingering in the muffled shelter of a yew. The shriek of a whistle – the very last warning call to stragglers – and the train starts to heave itself along the track, a groaning moaning sound of carriages awakening, spitting and spluttering as they gather speed. Thechug chug hissof the curved steel on the track. The sigh of cool air on the nose of the locomotive as it hurries through the darkness, its lurching the loudest thing in the night. Outside, a hunting owl’s wings brush the air. Tiny icicles dangle from the fir trees, growing a hair’s width every hour as the snow waterdrip drip drips. A fox cub sniffle-snuffles as he digs at a hedgehog nest.
Now the bell rings, tolling in the new day and bidding farewell to the old. It rings loud outside the train, echoing solemnly from the stones.
A clang for the King, a clang for the Queen,
three clangs for the sisters never to be seen.
In the first carriage behind the set and costumes and paraphernalia a touring ballet takes on the road, a woman called Belinda sits with a heavy hidebound ledger open on her lap. She scrawls quickly down the columns, dropping necklaces and bracelets and tiny gleaming gems into the iron-bound chest at her feet. As the fifth bell tolls she puts the ledger in the chest, locks it and puts the key on a chain around her neck.
A clang for the orchard, a clang for the sea,
three clangs for the suitors who lie in a dream.
In the dining carriage in the middle of the train the musicians are drinking, the usual crowd of cellist, timpani and bassoon sipping on their shot glasses and slamming on the tables to make syncopated rhythms. They hum Strauss and Handel as they get drunker and drunker, and when the tenth bell comes they weave it into their wobbly melodies and toast the coming of the new day.
A clang for the curse, a clang for the quest,
The sleeping cabins in the back half of the train are starting to fill up with those who hear the curfew of the midnight bells with relief rather than challenge. Yawning, the assorted dancers and stage managers and woodwind and strings spit out toothpaste, pull pyjamas out from under duvets and slip on eye masks, rolling out their shoulders and necks from another day of leaping and turning and humping and hauling and blowing and plucking to sink into the soft lull of the train gently rocking their tired bones.
And one last for the crow who sings in its nest.
At the very back of the train in the caboose, a woman sits with her legs dangling off the deck, a broom across her lap. She wears a voluminous dress of black serge and hums a little tune as she points her toes and swings her legs. Beside her is a tray bearing a chewed-up and spat-out sweet potatodumpling, a smear of pear crumble and two empty shot glasses. She watches the lichen-speckled graves and haughty mausoleums of the day before dissolve as the train staggers into a new landscape, and with the toll of the thirteenth bell she opens her beak and caws out into the night.
