The Ocean at the End of the Lane(47)

A voice said, ‘Idiot! Don’t move. Just don’t,’ and the voice was Lettie Hempstock’s, and I could not have moved if I had wanted to. She was on top of me, and she was heavier than I was, and she was pushing me down into the grass and the wet earth, and I could see nothing.

I felt them, though.

I felt them crash into her. She was holding me down, making herself a barrier between me and the world.

I heard Lettie’s voice wail in pain.

I felt her shudder and twitch.

A voice said, ‘This is unacceptable.’

It was a familiar voice, but still, I could not place it, or move to see who was talking.

Lettie was on top of me, still shaking, but as the voice spoke, she stopped moving. The voice continued, ‘On what authority do you harm my child?’

A pause. Then,

– She was between us and our lawful prey.

‘You’re scavengers. Eaters of offal, of rubbish, of garbage. You’re cleaners. Do you think that you can harm my family?’

I knew who was talking. The voice sounded like Lettie’s gran, like Old Mrs Hempstock. Like her, I knew, and yet so unlike. If Old Mrs Hempstock had been an empress, she might have talked like that, her voice more stilted and formal and yet more musical than the old-lady voice I knew.

Something wet and warm was soaking my back.

– No … No, lady.

That was the first time I heard fear or doubt in the voice of one of the hunger birds.

‘There are pacts, and there are laws and there are treaties, and you have violated all of them.’

Silence then, and it was louder than words could have been. They had nothing to say.

I felt Lettie’s body being rolled off mine, and I looked up to see Ginnie Hempstock’s sensible face. She sat on the ground on the edge of the road, and I buried my face in her bosom. She took me in one arm, Lettie in the other.

From the shadows, a hunger bird spoke, with a voice that was not a voice, and it said only,

– We are sorry for your loss.

‘Sorry?’ The word was spat, not said.

Ginnie Hempstock swayed from side to side, crooning low and wordlessly to me and to her daughter. Her arms were around me. I lifted my head and I looked back at the person speaking, my vision blurred by tears.

I stared at her.

It was Old Mrs Hempstock, I suppose. But it wasn’t. It was Lettie’s gran in the same way that …

I mean …

She shone silver. Her hair was still long, still white, but now she stood as straight as a teenager. My eyes had become used to the darkness, and I could not look at her face to see if it was the face I was familiar with: it was too bright. Magnesium-flare bright. Fireworks Night bright. Midday sun reflecting off a silver coin bright.

I looked at her as long as I could bear to look, and then I turned my head, screwing my eyes tightly shut, unable to see anything but a pulsating after-image.

The voice that was like Old Mrs Hempstock’s said, ‘Shall I bind you in the heart of a dark star, to feel your pain in a place where every fragment of a moment lasts a thousand years? Shall I invoke the compacts of Creation, and have you all removed from the list of created things, so there never will have been any hunger birds, and anything that wishes to traipse from world to world can do so with impunity?’

I listened for a reply, but heard nothing. Only a whimper, a mewl of pain or of frustration.

‘I’m done with you. I will deal with you in my own time and in my own way. For now I must tend to the children.’

– Yes, lady.

– Thank you, lady.

‘Not so fast. Nobody’s going anywhere before you put all those things back like they was. There’s Bo?tes missing from the sky. There’s an oak tree gone, and a fox. You put them all back, the way they were.’ And then the silvery empress added, in a voice that was now also unmistakably Old Mrs Hempstock’s, ‘Varmints.’

Somebody was humming a tune. I realised, as if from a long way away, that it was me, at the same moment that I remembered what the tune was:

Girls and boys come out to play,

the moon doth shine as bright as day.

Leave your supper and leave your meat,

and join your playfellows in the street.

Come with a whoop and come with a call.

Come with a whole heart or not at all …

I held on to Ginnie Hempstock. She smelled like a farm and like a kitchen, like animals and like food. She smelled very real, and the realness was what I needed at that moment.

I reached out a hand, tentatively touched Lettie’s shoulder. She did not move or respond.

Ginnie started speaking, then, but at first I did not know if she was talking to herself or to Lettie or to me. ‘They overstepped their bounds,’ she said. ‘They could have hurt you, child, and it would have meant nothing. They could have hurt this world without anything being said – it’s only a world, after all, and they’re just sand grains in the desert, worlds. But Lettie’s a Hempstock. She’s outside of their dominion, my little one. And they hurted her.’

I looked at Lettie. Her head had flopped down, hiding her face. Her eyes were closed.

‘Is she going to be all right?’ I asked.

Ginnie didn’t reply, just hugged us both the tighter to her bosom, and rocked, and crooned a wordless song.

The farm and its land no longer glowed golden. I could not feel anything in the shadows watching me, not any longer.