The Ocean at the End of the Lane(12)

I didn’t ask why. I just put the silver shilling down at the intersection of the Y. Lettie stretched her arms out, and turned very slowly, with the end of the stick pointing straight out. I moved with her, but felt nothing. No throbbing engines. We were over halfway around when she stopped and said, ‘Look!’

I looked in the direction she was facing, but I saw nothing but trees, and shadows in the wood.

‘No, look. There.’ She indicated with her head.

The tip of the hazel wand had begun smoking, softly. She turned a little to the left, a little to the right, a little further to the right again, and the tip of the wand began to glow a bright orange.

‘That’s something I’ve not seen before,’ said Lettie. ‘I’m using the coin as an amplifier, but it’s as if—’

There was a whoompf! and the end of the stick burst into flame. Lettie pushed it down into the damp moss. She said, ‘Take your coin back,’ and I did, picking it up carefully, in case it was hot, but it was icy cold. She left the hazel wand behind on the moss, the charcoal tip of it still smoking irritably.

Lettie walked and I walked beside her. We held hands now, my right hand in her left. The air smelled strange, like fireworks, and the world grew darker with every step we took into the forest.

‘I said I’d keep you safe, didn’t I?’ said Lettie.

‘Yes.’

‘I promised I wouldn’t let anything hurt you.’

‘Yes.’

She said, ‘Just keep holding my hand. Don’t let go. Whatever happens, don’t let go.’

Her hand was warm, but not sweaty. It was reassuring.

‘Hold my hand,’ she repeated. ‘And don’t do anything unless I tell you. You’ve got that?’

I said, ‘I don’t feel very safe.’

She did not argue. She said, ‘We’ve gone further than I imagined. Further than I expected. I’m not really sure what kinds of things live out here on the margins.’

The trees ended, and we walked out into open country.

I said, ‘Are we a long way from your farm?’

‘No. We’re still on the borders of the farm. Hempstock Farm stretches a very long way. We brought a lot of this with us from the old country, when we came here. The farm came with us, and brought things with it when it came. Gran calls them fleas.’

I did not know where we were, but I could not believe we were still on the Hempstocks’ land, no more than I believed we were in the world I had grown up in. The sky of this place was the dull orange of a warning light; the plants, which were spiky, like huge, ragged aloes, were a dark silvery green, and looked as if they had been beaten from gun-metal.

The coin, in my left hand, which had warmed to the heat of my body, began to cool down again, until it was as cold as an ice cube. My right hand held Lettie Hempstock’s hand as tightly as it could.

She said, ‘We’re here.’

I thought I was looking at a building at first: that it was some kind of tent, as high as a country church, made of grey and pink canvas that flapped in the gusts of storm wind, in that orange sky: a lopsided canvas structure aged by weather and ripped by time.

And then it turned and I saw its face, and I heard something make a whimpering sound, like a dog that had been kicked, and I realised that the thing that was whimpering was me.

Its face was ragged, and its eyes were deep holes in the fabric. There was nothing behind it, just a grey canvas mask, huger than I could have imagined, all ripped and torn, blowing in the gusts of storm wind.

Something shifted, and the ragged thing looked down at us.

Lettie Hempstock said, ‘Name yourself.’

There was a pause. Empty eyes stared down. Then a voice as featureless as the wind said, ‘I am the lady of this place. I have been here for such a long time. Since before the little people sacrificed each other on the rocks. My name is my own, child. Not yours. Now leave me be, before I blow you all away.’ It gestured with a limb like a broken mainsail, and I felt myself shivering.

Lettie Hempstock squeezed my hand and I felt braver. She said, ‘Asked you to name yourself, I did. I en’t heard more’n empty boasts of age and time. Now, you tell me your name and I en’t asking you a third time.’ She sounded more like a country girl than she ever had before. Perhaps it was the anger in her voice: her words came out differently when she was angry.

‘No,’ whispered the grey thing, flatly. ‘Little girl, little girl … who’s your friend?’

Lettie whispered, ‘Don’t say nothing.’ I nodded, pressed my lips tightly together.

‘I am growing tired of this,’ said the grey thing, with a petulant shake of its ragged-cloth arms. ‘Something came to me, and pleaded for love and help. It told me how I could make all the things like it happy. That they are simple creatures, and all any of them want is money, just money, and nothing more. Little tokens of work. If it had asked, I would have given them wisdom, or peace, perfect peace …’

‘None of that,’ said Lettie Hempstock. ‘You’ve got nothing to give them that they want. Let them be.’

The wind gusted and the gargantuan figure flapped with it, like huge sails swinging, and when the wind was done the creature had changed position. Now it seemed to have crouched lower to the ground, and it was examining us like an enormous canvas scientist looking at two white mice.