Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #16
He’d spent the afternoon seeing to his suit, brushing off each speck of dust. He’d showered and dabbed himself with the rose oil he’s been oiling his skin with for years, ever-hopeful something would take him based on the scent of flowers alone.
He examined himself in the mirror. He’s more than forty – well, his body is – but he hardly looks a day older than twenty-six.
Long ago he decided he would rather die than moulder in the human world, ageing and sagging and rotting from the inside out.
Creams, skin treatments and a strict gym regimen have kept him looking like the airbrushed images on the front of magazines.
Women do double takes and men lick their lips at the sight of him, and although it gives his ego a boost, he ignores it all.
He hasn’t taken a lover in fifteen years.
The thought of all that slick wetness, the smells and the leaking makes him want to heave.
When he goes back to Fae – and he will go back to Fae – he will go as a princeling, not the troll he’d left as.
Two nights ago, he’d stayed outside the Grub after the show.
The train was stopped by a river and he’d seen lights flickering on the bank, a warm smell of peaches drifting in the air despite the autumn chill and he’d walked towards the glow, violin slung over his back, his heart singing, the kind of broad, boyish smile on his lips that he hasn’t had in years.
But they were uncatchable. Every time he thought he was near, the world would go topsy-turvy and they would move off to the side, behind him, somewhere just out of his vision that he couldn’t quite see.
He wandered, following the lights, until he came to the caboose.
In the glow of the orange light he saw a huge black bird pecking at one of Gino’s bread rolls.
An old-fashioned lantern with a thick pillar of a candle sat beside it.
The Crow looked up at him and cocked its head.
But it’s Halloween! he’d said in desperation.
The Crow gave a soft caw and went back to its soup.
He’ll try again tonight. Fae time doesn’t run parallel to human time – and hasn’t he found that out the hard way?
– but the veil is still weak. Whoever turns up tonight could be powerful, maybe even wanting to keep the merriment of the Hallow’s Eve feasts going with a little mortal sport.
All Souls’, the day of dead things. Henry could almost hear them, hooves thundering, horn blaring out into the mist to call the hunt, bells tinkling with the frost. He shut his eyes to the graves and took a long breath of the damp air.
From the corner of his eye he sees Michael stuffing his notebook into his bag and starting to stand.
Henry takes that as his cue. He puts his violin back in its case, flicks the latches and follows Michael out of the green room, along the corridor and through the door to the stage because he does not want to take any chances, not on All Souls’, not surrounded by graves, not here in this in-between place where up is down and in is out and there is nowhere in the world better for him to get home or die trying.
* * *
‘Alors!’ Cecile claps her hands and the stage falls silent.
Michael slips into the chair at the piano and folds his hands into his lap.
‘We begin with the court procession. The spacing was atrocious last night so I’ll give you five minutes – ten, I am feeling generous – to work it out and then we’ll run it. ’
Belinda lets the heavy door from the corridor shut behind her and sees the dancers already moving about on the stage.
She checks her watch. Two forty-six. Bugger.
Cecile always starts rehearsals bang on time, she’ll have to wait until later – maybe even tomorrow – to get her to sign off on these expenses.
‘Belinda? Can I have a word?’
Hot breath on her neck and a waft of something frying in old, rancid grease and Belinda turns to see Derek standing too close, hands deep in his pockets, staring at her intently. She suppresses a shudder and takes a discreet step away from him.
‘Of course. Everything all right?’
‘Depends on how you look at things. I saw hoof-prints, on the earth, by one of the graves out there. Name of Desmond C Jones, if you care to see for yourself.’
‘Right.’ The man makes her skin crawl, she can’t help it.
When she pricks his finger to take his blood on his pledge day what she squeezes into the vial is a bright, mossy green.
The Crow has brought him here for reasons it has declined to share with her but now she has to put up with the sour stink of him, the litany of complaints he produces and the vaguely menacing air of threat that he knows something she doesn’t.
‘I just thought, All Souls’ and all that. You—’
‘Yes, thank you Derek. I’ll look into it.’ He shrugs in a maddeningly casual way and walks off, a little, taunting whistle under his breath.
Belinda sighs, pulls out her clipboard and shuffles the papers there. She’ll go find AJ and remind him, once again, that Madagascan vanilla macarons and pots of loose leaf lapsang souchong from Fortnum & Mason are not reasonable company expenses.
* * *
In the musician’s green room, Wilf the cello, Jasper the timpani and Steve the bassoon are introducing David the new harp to one of their favourite discussions – the timbre and pitch of the Grub’s bell, its esoteric meanings and its role in the music of the spheres.
‘Well.’ Wilf leans back, takes a swig from the plastic water bottle in his hand which mostly contains vodka.
‘We’re pretty sure it rings on D when it does the single peal before we leave the Grit at the end of the show.
That’s the note we hear, mind, not necessarily how the bell smith cast it, because of the…
What does Lance call it? Time and space warp of the Grub when it gets going at midnight—’
‘—we should ask that fella, next time he comes—’
‘—not likely, Belinda keeps him on a tight leash—’
David is interested in this conversation, and in general finds these three men good company in many ways, but he is feeling quite bleary after last night’s whisky and struggling to hold back a yawn.
Wilf talks about the bell smith often, and always in tones of hushed admiration.
David has the idea of some kind of consultant wizard who graces them all with a visit every couple of years to do arcane magic around the bell and leave Belinda with a signed year’s warranty that guarantees absolutely nothing but the sheer existence of the peal.
‘—but we disagree about what we hear at the half when the bell rings the Angelus – just another of the Crow’s jokes – because Jasper swears it’s D again, how could it be otherwise?
But Steve has always said he hears E in winter and C minor in summer.
And the weather does matter you know, the sounds bleed, you can’t quite make it out—’
* * *
Up in the lighting box, Zach shows Lara each of the buttons and dials on the lighting board and talks through each lighting cue of each act.
‘I feel a bit awkward asking this, Zach, but who am I replacing?’
Zach knows what she’s trying to say but his stomach swoops at the thought. Harder than he thought, to explain all the little pieces of etiquette here, all the stupid dos and don’ts.
‘Me.’ He smooths his fingers across the folder of cues, buying himself time. ‘The old lighting director just retired, she was called Juliet, taught me everything I know. Mackie promoted me and hired you.’
She exhales. ‘So I’m not replacing someone who got snatched.’
‘No.’
‘When was the last time that happened?’
Zach winces. ‘To be honest, it’s not something you’re supposed to talk about. People get twitchy about it. Superstitious. About a month ago, maybe two, a dancer went missing after class. No one saw what happened.’
She frowns. Zach can see she’s not satisfied but he can’t bring himself to give her more details.
What would he say? That Alex had been well-liked, left behind a girlfriend, played poker in the tournaments on Saturday nights, that even Cecile looked a bit sad as she drank her white wine in the Grub as the Crow cawed its fury that afternoon?
Is that all a life amounts to, after the Fae folk have stolen it for their own?
Zach clears his throat. ‘All right, let’s change the subject. I have to tell you about days off.’
Lara looks cheered to hear that. ‘So, days off are safer, obviously, because we’re back in the real world.’
What’s this real world you’re talking about, Zach? he hears Juliet laughing. Tell me more.
‘Belinda tells us where it’s going to be with a few days’ notice, then the Grub doors open at first reveille – that’s nine o’ clock, absolutely sparrow’s fart but there you go – and we’ll be on some platform of some train station somewhere, usually where there’s, like, engineering works or a red signal or some bullshit like that.
You’ve got until midnight to get yourself back on the Grub and then we leave for the next place. ’
‘How often do we get one?’
Zach grimaces. ‘Not often enough. And we never know when they’re going to be.’
‘But isn’t that—’
‘—illegal, yes. And Belinda’s usually all for the unions, but she says there’s absolutely no other way the Crow will let her do it.’
Lara bends over the board and reads a few more of the dial labels.
‘If you’ve got a special occasion – wedding, funeral, that kind of thing – just let her know.
She’s normally quite good about trying to get you there, sets you up in a guest cabin for the night, lets you out in the morning near wherever you’re trying to get to.
Better than using normal trains, anyway.
And safe. Never heard of a fairy going anywhere near the guest cabins. ’
‘You ever meet a fairy before?’ Lara asks Zach. There’s a casual tone to her voice that Zach can’t quite work out.
‘We see a couple hundred of them every night right there,’ he points out into the auditorium.