The answer to the first was bees. I’m here to find the second.
There were now only two tiny pages left of the little notebook.
Fay slipped it into her pocket and turned towards the ocean, which shone like a shield in the burnished sunlight. The sea was going out: she could see the gleaming of the wet sand. A cone-shaped shell lay on the shore, larger than any she had ever seen.
He blows his horn both loud and shrill, thought Fay, and picked up the seashell. It felt smooth and inviting.
I wonder, would it make a sound? Fay raised it to her lips. There was a tiny aperture at the sharp end of the shell, and blowing into it, she thought she heard whalesong, low and sweet and melancholy, over the sound of the waves on the beach.
The sun was setting at her back, sending the shadows sprawling. Even her own, faint as it was, stretched all the way to the tideline. She put the seashell in her pack, along with the rose and the blanket of stars. Over the sea to Norroway, she thought, as she stood on the seashore, watching the silver sky darken to blue, until at last all the shadows were gone, and nothing was left but a river of stars.
Two
Fay lay on her back on the sand with her pack as a pillow. The stars were coldly, achingly bright, wrapping the night in a broad, bright band. Slowly the moon rose over the sea, painting a silver path to the shore. Then came the bats – hundreds of them, swooping and dancing like butterflies across the broken face of the moon. They reminded Fay of Alberon, and of how he and Moth and Peronelle had vanished into a cloud of wings. She remembered that night vividly: the moonlit statue of Anteros; the madcap and the butterflies; the vision of Daisy through the cracks. Whatever had happened to her mind and to her memories of home, these memories were still intact, like the tale of King Orfeo, and the Oracle’s riddle:
Who can find me an acre of land,
Between the salt water and the sea sand?
The words had power. The riddle, too. And had not the tiger told her there was truth to be found in stories? Alberon’s tale of the Queen who left her kingdom to fall in love; the tale of King Orfeo and the Hallowe’en King; the Oracle’s mocking answer – all these were linked to some deeper truth, some message she was meant to decode. And under the glamours and stories and tricks, through the veil of the madcap smoke and her failing memory, she knew that Daisy was waiting. She had to solve the second part of the riddle. The Night Train had carried her thus far – surely for a reason. And so she lay on the cool dark sand and watched the river of stars above, and listened to the sound of the waves that slowly crept back up the beach, and somewhere between the tideline and the pale rags of the rising waves, Fay heard the sound of distant song, and soon fell asleep and was dreaming.
Three
Dream is a river that runs to the sea, the dead girl on the train had said. And now Fay dreamed – or thought she dreamed – of lying on the beach at night, looking up at the circling stars, with the sound of the sea all around her. The moon was high now, pale and sharp above a silver bank of cloud: its light shone on the water like a ladder to the sky. And in her dream Fay saw a ship moored between the banks of cloud; a ship that shone with the light of the stars, its sails as fine as spider silk, and she could see people clinging to the rigging and looking down from the deck, and soaring like birds around the hull on wings that gleamed like moonlight.
Awake or asleep, Fay thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen; and as she watched, she realized that she could hear voices, raised in song above the rushing of the sea:
There lived a king unto the east
(Blow, blow, the winds blow)
Who loved a queen unto the west
(Green, green, the hedgerow).
The king he has a-hunting gone
(Blow, blow, the winds blow)
And left his true love all alone
(Green, green, the hedgerow).
The King o’ Faërie, with his dart,
(Blow, blow, the winds blow)
Hath pierced the lady to the heart
(Green, green, the hedgerow).
Hath kept her in his fortress deep
(Blow, blow, the winds blow)
Within the realm of endless sleep
(Green, green, the hedgerow).
But King Orfeo in pursuit
(Blow, blow, the winds blow)
Played a reel upon his flute
(Green, green, the hedgerow).
And first he played the notes of noy
(Blow, blow, the winds blow)
And then he played the notes of joy
(Green, green, the hedgerow).
And then he played the gabber reel
(Blow, blow, the winds blow)
The notes that make a sick heart hale
(Green, green, the hedgerow).
‘What does it mean?’ said Fay aloud. The song had sounded so familiar, the words so intimate and strange. There had to be a message in there – it could be no coincidence that this was a version of Alberon’s tale of King Orfeo and the Hallowe’en King, who, in this version, seemed to be the King of Faërie. She thought of the travelling girl’s words in London Beyond: Some call him Lord Death, the Harlequin, the Erl-King, or the Elphin Knight. Sometimes they call him the Shadowless Man.
The Shadowless Man. The object of Daisy’s night terrors featured in the story that had brought her here. A man of many identities; a trickster and a teller of tales, who could, depending on the circumstance, be either the King of Faërie or the Lord of the Kingdom of Death.
Stories and songs are his currency, Mabs had told her. Riddles too. She had been speaking of Alberon. But in this version of the Orpheus tale, Hades and Oberon seemed to be interchangeable. Of course, it was only a dream, she thought, looking up into the brilliant sky. The sky-ship was still sailing there, sails unfurled like Northern Lights. And yet she could feel the sand beneath her palms, smell the sharp scent of the surf, feel the chill of the sea wind against her bare legs. It all felt so real. Was she dreaming at all?
Dream is a river that runs to the sea, the dead girl on the train had said. And if Mabs were to be believed, the Night Train itself was powered by dreams and riddles and ballads and stories. Over the sea to Norroway, she thought, and felt the hairs on her arms rise as if in response to the words.
Once more she looked up at the sky-ship, gleaming in the moonlit sky. Then she closed her eyes and thought once more of the Oracle’s riddle:
Who can find me an acre of land,
Between the salt water and the sea sand?
‘The answer is Dream,’ she said aloud. ‘The second part of the riddle is Dream.’
And then she opened her eyes to find it was daylight once more, and that she was standing on the bank of a broad and fast-running river, while far beyond, in the distance, stretched a bone-grey, bone-dry expanse of sand. The sky was grey; the ground was grey, but the river – if it was a river – seemed made up of shining fragments like pieces of tinsel, or fireflies, or flares of incandescent gas. And up, behind and over her there loomed a shadow dark as Death, which, when she turned to look at it, revealed itself to be a cliff so high that it vanished into the clouds.
‘Those are the cliffs of Damnation,’ said a voice at Fay’s side. ‘And on the far side of the river Dream is the Kingdom of the Dead.’
Four
Fay turned, and saw a young woman standing beside her on the bank. Her hair was closely cropped, and her eyes were dark and sweet as honeycomb. She was wearing ripped jeans and a T-shirt printed with the words: LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY. She looked vaguely familiar, though Fay could not quite place her. And in one hand she held the rose that Fay had found on Euston road, as long ago and far away as anything from a fairy tale.