Where was Pim? Young was turning in a wild circle as though he too searched. There. She was standing facing Faland. Neither moved. Young would come to his senses and give the alarm in a minute. Laura, still supporting Winter, crossed the space between them, her feet awkward in the dust. “Pim, come on, come away. We’ll go back to Halifax. We’ll—”
Pim turned her head a little. But Laura’s voice died in her throat. Winter’s hand tightened on her arm. She’d had years of schooling in the hardest, coldest reality—and she recognized the look on Pim’s face. It was the look a wounded man got sometimes, a manwho was not mortally wounded, perhaps, but who had simply had enough. Who meant to leave the world behind.
“Pim, he’s not—” But she met Pim’s eyes. Stopped again. Felt Winter quiver, as he fought to stay upright.
Pim said to Faland, “You’ll help them get out. All the way out. To safety. To the ordinary world.”
Faland’s gaze was fixed as though in fascination on Pim’s face, as though he could read the unsteady play of emotion there like sheet-music. He said, “And you will tell me everything. Every night. What you love. What you hate. And why you’re afraid. Until you remember nothing at all.”
“Yes.”
“Pim, don’t,” whispered Laura.
Faland smiled a little. “Enjoy the pieces of your brother, Iven. Or rather, enjoy watching him enjoy them. Do you think any part of dear Freddie is yours anymore? It isn’t. It’s his. And a little bit mine.”
Laura swallowed around a great, furious knot in her throat, but Pim merely turned and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and said, “It’s for the best, Laura.”
Laura was silent. Because she’d seen Pim at last, through the gauze of her bright, sweet nature. And what moved under the skin was wounded, and ruthless, and certainly a little mad. She realized that she was crying, and saw that Pim was too.
Faland had his violin. His eyes were still on Pim. “How’s this, then, sweet?” he said. “I finished it.” He put bow to string.
It wasn’t so much music as a mad scream, of rage and grief and insane determination, jagged and wretchedly beautiful. Laura heard Pim’s voice in the howl of it. The roar of the crowd echoed the sound of the music, the churning rhythm of war all around them. Laura stood there for a moment caught between Faland’s poisonous refuge and the world’s dangers. She could have turned to him then. Faland probably knew it. Winter was silent, but she could feel him shake beside her. Any moment, the alarm would come and then—
And then Jones was there. “What in hell, Iven?” he said.
POPERINGHE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM
April 1918
With no other means tohand, Freddie and Jones walked to Poperinghe, stealing through shadows, hurrying through the two miles or so that separated Pop from Couthove, almost impossibly taxing on Freddie’s drained limbs. The city was in warlike chaos, and the noise shredded his nerves.
With Faland, it felt like nothing else in the world could touch him. But now the world was all around him, raw and bright and painful, its dangers immediate, its ugliness obvious. They kept their heads down as they passed the outskirts of town, dodging frantic traffic in bad light until they got to the town square, which was packed and heaving with men. He wasn’t sure how, in the bewildering midst of the crowd, his eye found Laura. But he found her. She was standing beside Winter, supporting him, his arm over her shoulders.
Winter’s eyes were narrow with pain, his face set. There was blood on Laura’s skirt, and the remains of tear-tracks on her face. How were they—
Then Freddie’s senses cleared a little, and he heard the musicbeneath the crowd’s noise, realized that it moved not to the demands of modern war, but to another power entirely. Faland was there. He was playing his violin.
Jones broke away, went to Laura and said, “What in hell, Iven? Are you all right? Where is Shaw? What the hell are you doing with…” He gave the half-conscious Winter a very unfriendly look.
Freddie had followed Jones, trying to ignore the music lurking in the crowd’s rising noise. Winter raised his head a little. Their eyes met. Winter said, “Iven—why did you—?” A billow of flame, pouring like wings from the town hall, cut him off, and there was the music again, insistent, underlying the noise of the crowd.
There were shouts of fear, of anger, the sound of car horns, as though Faland were dragging sheer madness up from where it lurked beneath the surface of their minds. Or perhaps they were just reacting to the fire. Freddie couldn’t tell what was real anymore. He felt quite insane.
What now?
He raised his eyes and caught Faland’s gaze. As though he’d always been there, eyes heavy-lidded while he waited for Freddie to notice. He wasn’t playing his violin anymore, but that didn’t matter. The essence of it had been taken up by the crowd.
Faland wasn’t alone. The beautiful woman was with him, and Freddie understood the expression on her face, the terrible decision. Magic and oblivion on one side, and a whole broken future in their new world on the other.
Jones said, “Mrs. Shaw—what are you doing?”
Freddie knew what she was doing. He felt a surge of jealousy. He’d chosen the new world, chosen Winter, chosen Laura, chosen the wasteland of his life, with whatever green shoots he could coax out of the parched terrain of his soul. He saw that the woman had made the other choice, to go into the dark with the stranger, and allow herself oblivion.
For a second,heregretted. For a second, he almost called to Faland, his whole heart twisting suddenly with longing. Falandwatched him, waiting. But Winter’s arm was tight around him, and Laura was leaning on him from the other side, and they were all anchoring each other in the madness, and he couldn’t have broken that connection, not for anything.
Mrs. Shaw’s delicate face was twisted up with longing, and her eyes were on Laura. She hesitated.
“Pim,” whispered Laura, barely audible over the madness. “I need you too.” Their eyes, amber and blue, were locked together.
