Chapter 38
The frigidarium filled with gasps and whispered exclamations.
Eve turned to look at the horse, but Max remained staring straight ahead at the door leading to the changing rooms, his ears ringing with the clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.
Horses had been ever present at the Western Front.
There had been supply horses, and ammunition horses, ambulance drivers and cavalry chargers.
And then there had been the officers’ mounts.
Max had had several because—one way or another—horses didn’t last long in a war.
But he knew somehow, before he even turned around, which horse this was. He couldn’t have said how he knew. There was nothing especially distinctive about the sound of one horse’s hoofbeats over another’s. But, still, he knew.
People were exclaiming and muttering as the horse stopped, right behind Max. He felt the huff of its warm breath in his hair, the affectionate nudge of his shoulder.
He closed his eyes briefly. “Hello, Stranger.”
He turned, bracing himself in case the horse looked the way it had when he’d last seen it.
But, no, the grey stallion was dirty yet unharmed.
Stranger’s coat was the exact colour of storm clouds, and his dark eyes were gentle and noble.
The most impossibly majestic creature. Max had believed that there was a horse—a horse that, for some reason, chose never to appear to him even when it showed itself to all the others—but he had never dreamt that it would be his horse.
So much more than a mount. A friend. A comrade.
He trembled as he raised a hand to place gently upon the horse’s muzzle.
It had been too long since he had touched a horse, and he felt a deep rush of gladness, remembering anew how the presence of a horse at the front helped raise the morale of all who came into contact with it.
They were magical beasts, and for a moment, the frigidarium and all the people inside it ceased to exist. It was only Max and the horse, staring at each other, and Thomas’s voice echoing down through the years.
That’s how many times I’ve been over the top. Four times already. This’ll be the last, I think….
Max had the exact same sense of clarity now.
He looked at his horse and he knew, deep in his bones, that he wasn’t going to check out of the White Octopus Hotel.
Not this time. Anna was right. It was a cold feeling, but somehow not as terrifying as he’d expected it to be.
Stranger leaned into his touch, huffing out his breath again, before brushing past him towards the door.
Wait, Max wanted to call. Don’t go.
But the horse had not been a part of the world for a very long time now.
It headed swiftly for the exit and as it passed beneath the archway, an object fell from one of its saddlebags.
Max walked over to pick it up. It was a trench watch—something between a pocket watch and a wristwatch—of the kind that had been worn by many officers during the war.
It was broken, the hands on its face were all still, but when he slid the watch from the wide leather strap and turned it over, he saw a familiar inscription engraved upon the back.
For Max. Love, Mother.
“Is it yours?” Eve asked quietly at his side.
He nodded. “I lost it. Back in the trenches.”
A couple of guests were coming over, eager to see what had fallen from the horse’s bag.
“It’s nothing,” he said in response to the questions. “Only a timepiece that no longer works.”
The guests wandered off, disappointed, but right at that moment, the watch suddenly started ticking again in his hand, the thin second hand moving rapidly around the face once more.
“Huh.” Max stared down at it. “Maybe it wasn’t broken at all.
Perhaps it just couldn’t operate in the trenches.
” He glanced at Eve. “We always used to say that time didn’t work in the same way there.
Some nights it seemed to stop working altogether.
You almost couldn’t call it time, it was… it was something else.”
“Why would a horse bring this back to you now?” Eve asked, narrowing her eyes at it. “What does it mean?”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, but he knew well enough what it meant. His time was finally up.
—
The rest of the day passed quickly with octopus-hunting. They were up to thirty-four of the sea creatures now and ten clocks, leaving only two octopuses and two clocks to go.
“Still no sign of the Sugar Room,” Eve said later that afternoon. “I don’t understand where it could be. Do you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen or heard of such a place here.”
Eventually, they retired to the Reading Room, where Eve opened up a sketchbook and began doodling out a map of the ground floor.
Max welcomed the opportunity to sit quietly with his thoughts for a moment, replaying the encounter with his horse over and over again.
His skin still tingled with the thrill of it, the deep joy of being reunited with an old friend.
At the same time, the shock felt a bit like a blow to the head; he could hear the echoes of it ringing inside his ears. The same thought flew through his mind.
This is the end of the road.
I will never see 1936.
I will never check out….
Did that mean he was going to die? Or simply vanish?
Perhaps get lost within the hotel’s walls, like the octopus on the sixth floor?
He recalled what Eve had said about how he’d visited her in 2016 as an old man.
Could that be possible? It didn’t make sense, but then nothing much in this place seemed logical.
The thought of old age was suddenly exhausting and unwelcome.
He took a deep breath and looked out the window.
Now, as in 1918, there was something about looking at the lake and the mountains outside that was deeply soothing.
They were so old, so still, so unmoved by all of mankind’s trials and troubles.
They’d been here long before Max arrived, and they’d still stand many years after he was gone.
The thought was comforting. He was glad to have his trench watch back, although it was strange to see it ticking out the seconds normally.
It was the last thing his mother had sent him before she died.
A precious part of life before. Holding the watch in his hand made him feel closer to her than he had in many years.
Eventually, Max put the watch back in his pocket, beside the fumsup, and went over to look at Eve’s map.
It was functionally accurate, showing the correct position and proportions of the various rooms. But the map was more than a map.
It was beautiful too. She had decorated it with sketches of the golden palm trees in the Palm Bar, the fan mirror in the Smoking Room, the grandfather clock in the lobby, and a shower of musical notes made from water in the Fountain Room.
In a separate building she’d drawn the steam baths, with their various chambers.
There was a perfect charcoal sketch of Stranger in the frigidarium—a dirty war horse, stark against the splendour of Italian mosaics and Moorish arches.
“That is remarkably lovely,” Max said. He had to resist the urge to ask if he might have it, this perfect sketch of his most loved horse.
Eve glanced up. “I was hoping it might reveal the location of the Sugar Room, but I’ve mapped out the entire ground floor and there isn’t space for it anywhere.
It must be a secret room, like the corridor I found.
Mrs. Roth told me it appears at different times, for different reasons.
It could be anywhere—on the roof, or in the nonexistent basement, or in the steam baths. ”
At the mention of the steam baths, Max felt the sudden urge to apologise again for something that had happened seventeen years ago for him but hadn’t yet happened for her at all.
Something he had believed at the time that they both wanted but later realised she hadn’t wished for at all.
Even now, the regret was like a small piece of shell fragment that he couldn’t dig out of his skin.
“Perhaps it’s back there,” Eve suddenly said.
“What? Where?”
“The Sugar Room. Maybe it’s back there in 1918.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I saw a painting in the walls, of the three time-travelling keys.”
“There are three of them?”
“Mmm. Mine and two others. Perhaps one of them goes back to 1918.”
“Perhaps, but what has that got to do with the Sugar Room?”
“The keys all turned into sugar,” Eve replied. “While I was looking at them. And there was a guest in the Palm Bar last night. I heard her say that one of the octopuses is hidden in the past.”
“I don’t know,” Max replied. “I already told you that I didn’t see the Sugar Room, and I never heard anyone else mention it either. Let’s eat. They’ll be serving dinner by now.”
“All right. Shall we meet back downstairs in twenty minutes?”
Max nodded. “See you then.”