Faland rolled his glass between his fingers. “And what will you give me, if I help you?”
All the air seemed to leave his body. “You know,” said Freddie. “There is only one thing you want from me. And—and you planned this. To get it from me.”
“Well? Did I get it?”
“Yes. Damn you, yes. Anything.”
Faland got to his feet. His eye sparked. “Very well. We’ll take a leaf out of your book, Iven, and take your poor hunted friend to your sister. A fair price, would you say?”
Freddie was silent.
Faland fixed him with a faintly smiling gaze. “And afterward, Wilfred, you will tell me at last about the darkness, and how you came to love that man.”
CHÂTEAU COUTHOVE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM
April 1918
It was still dark outside,the cold, sticky hour before sunrise. Laura woke, with sleep still heavy in her eyes, and saw her mother in the shadows.
She rolled to her feet without thinking. The darkness was empty. But Laura reached out anyway. For the first time, her first thought was not a wordless scream of horror and guilt. Her first thought wasAre you there?
Her second thought wasWhy are you here? Did you lead me to Winter?It was, although she had told no one, the other reason she’d been ready to trust him.
Are you helping me?
No answer came from the darkness, but Laura stared into the empty corner, and neither experience nor reason could suppress her hope:I’m not alone.
Then Laura realized that Pim was gone.
She didn’t know why her stomach knotted. Pim could have slipped out for any number of reasons. But even as she reassuredherself, Laura was reaching for her dress, thrusting her feet into damp boots, and pinning her veil as she turned to the door.
· · ·
Pim wasn’t in the main ward. A glance told her that, but Laura went in anyway, her electric lantern a blue-white pool in the darkness. She stopped here and there, offering one man a bedpan, another a drink of water. Asked the ones who were awake if they’d seen Mrs. Shaw. Sighing, they admitted that they had not.
Where, then?
She came to the silent Winter. She’d bandaged the healed stump of his shoulder to conceal the fact of the old injury; she made a show of checking it, then turned to the bullet hole in his side. He hadn’t bled through the bandage, although his skin was hot and dry. She thought he’d do. Her sense of the stages of dying was unerring. Jones’s blood had helped, and the ether had worn off.
All the men nearby were asleep, although a few tossed in a pain-filled doze. A boy was whimpering. Laura turned away to give him morphine, feeling Winter’s gaze, then she returned to him, and gave him some water, and under the cover of her helping him sit up, holding the cup to his lips, he said, “Your brother’s with a person called Faland.”
They had only moments:How, when, whywere questions she could not ask. So she whispered, simply, “I have met Faland. Tell me.”
Winter said, “We were in Ypres together, wounded, when Faland found us. I was close to dying; perhaps that was why I feared him so. He looked like the war to me. Devouring. I tried to tell your brother, but he didn’t understand. He saved my life, but went away with Faland. That’s where he is. That’s where I have to find him.”
She didn’t ask why he’d do so much for her brother. She knew enough of soldiers to understand the ties that sprang up between men out there: thicker than blood and selfless. “Did you find him?”
Winter said, “I saw him. During the riot.” The blue eyes stared at the ceiling past Laura’s shoulder, and she thought how it must havebeen for him as a fugitive, searching, stealing. Almost to himself, Winter said, “The ghost pointed and I saw you. And the same night—I saw him too. It felt like a miracle.”
“Ghost?” said Laura, despite herself.
“Front’s full of ghosts,” Winter whispered. His gaze wandered a little now. She laid the back of her hand against his forehead, felt his temperature rising. “How many dead men? A million? More? Tombs are open. Wasn’t it written? They said that would happen, at the end of the world.And I saw the dead, great and small.They can help you. They helped me. People thought I was one of the wild men. That’s why I wasn’t captured. The dead—they told me— Haven’t you seen? New heaven. That was written too. New earth. New hell too. That’s not in the verse. But it’s true. You’ve seen, haven’t you—how the new world and the old world share space…” He shook his head.
“How do I find Faland?”
“The ghosts,” he said. “You have to ask the ghosts.”
She was afraid her hope would pull her into madness with him. Afraid she was already there. Afraid they both were sane and the world was infinitely stranger than she’d thought. She was a creature of her senses: diagrams, bodies. She wasn’t equipped for this;shewasn’t a poet. “Winter, who is Faland? What would he want with my brother?”
