A Long Day in Lychford Page 8

Oh. Oh no. What could be worse than this shared pity?

  What could be better?

  Judith bellowed internally. “Can you stop being so bloody soft and just find what you need to—?!”

  “You don’t get to order me around while we’re the same person.”

  “I order myself around all the bloody time, you stupid woman!”

  “We are going to have a talk about this, when . . . if I can get us home.”

  “What are you going to do about this one?” Judith mentally pointed to Rory, still curled up, holding on to the sprites like they were soft toys. “He’s in your power now.”

  “So I can’t just save you and the . . . sprites?” She’d found what they were called inside Judith’s knowledge. She hadn’t wanted to think that harsh a thought, but there were no barriers between the two women now.

  “Oh, don’t lie to yourself when someone’s sharing your brain. You won’t leave him here to be crushed.”

  “I just wanted him to know I had the option. I’m in his head too.”

  Rory looked up, suddenly furious. “Get out!” he bellowed. “Don’t touch me!” And he started to scream every epithet he knew. Everything about race, everything about gender, everything about anything he was not.

  There was a long pause. Then, without another word inside Judith’s head, something changed.

  * * *

  The three fairies had suddenly reacted to something Lizzie didn’t understand. As one, they’d shouted something guttural, and crouched. Then they had charged.

  Lizzie hadn’t hesitated. She’d grabbed the nearest kid and shoved them at the point where she’d encountered the anomaly, praying fervently as she did so, trying to push emotion into the act of pushing physically. The kid went straight past the anomalous space, and so Lizzie shoved her hands into it, calling out to anyone and anything who could help her in that instant, giving all her emotion to that in a way which she was used to in prayer.

  She didn’t have more than a moment. Then she’d have to get herself between the others, who were already starting to scream, run, push forward, and the danger that was coming for them. She’d wave her arms and try to look powerful, she decided. Oh God, she was going to die here.

  “It’s okay, Lizzie, I see you now!” a familiar voice shouted. In the centre of her own head. Kind of where she was used to God being. “Thanks for calling me. The fairies had put some sort of . . . curtain . . . in the way.”

  “Autumn?!” said Lizzie, boggled.

  But in that second the shadows of the fairies hit them all, and the screams of panic turned to sheer terror, as Lizzie felt rather than saw the swing of three swords—

  * * *

  The swords passed over her.

  And the others.

  Lizzie felt a great sense of closeness to her old friend as they fell into darkness together, a voice and an intimate presence in her head, an astonishing embrace.

  And then they were all standing there in the woods above Lychford on a late summer afternoon. Lizzie looked round and was relieved to see Judith, and Autumn, and with them Rory Holt, looking round, yelling as if he’d just been struck, and a man with a splint on his leg who was blinking, stunned, slowly getting to his feet, and all the ravers, and the DJ, and the lad who’d hugged her, and Stewie, and his bouncers, and half their generator, which was steaming and sparking where it had been cut in two, and no sign at all of the barn, which was now presumably lost somewhere in the great beyond along with the DJ’s equipment . . . and floating in the air, a group of . . . perfect, smiling, giggling cherubs.

  Rory Holt looked up at the creatures and broke into a gap-toothed grin. “That’s what they really were,” he said. “Little angels. They must have saved us.”

  Judith looked awkwardly at the other two. “Cherubs,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “Sprites, cherubs, I knew t’were one or t’other.”

  Autumn nodded in the direction of the cherubs, looking pointedly at Rory. “It looks like we brought some refugees over the border.”

  “What are you talking about?” He looked angry at her. “What have they got to do with that? They’re little angels.”

  Lizzie found herself remembering certain lines from scripture about the need to treat strangers as if they might be angels.

  Autumn’s voice stayed calm as she addressed him again. “But you have me to thank.”

  Lizzie looked to Judith, but the old woman now had her hands stuck deep in the pockets of her cardigan, her expression unreadable, her body language saying she was deliberately taking no action.

  “To thank for what? You got me into whatever that was. Probably drugs in my pint or summat. I’m going to tell the police.” He looked fearful for a moment, as if Autumn might attack him. Then, reasonably certain he could turn his back on her, he started off down the hill, looking back over his shoulder from time to time, an expression on his face of valiant, infringed dignity.

  “What an enormous wanker,” said Stewie. And, thought Lizzie, he should know. She looked around at the kids from the rave. They were a mixture of angry and uncomprehending. They, like her, must all have had Autumn in their heads, and knew what she’d done. To them, that was all that mattered.

  She turned back to see that Judith was watching Autumn to see what she would do next. Lizzie saw that the younger witch was holding in her hand something that Lizzie could only dimly see, a handful of glowing thread. “I can do maybe one more thing with this,” she said.

  “You could send him back,” said Judith.

  “But then,” said Autumn, “the cherubs wouldn’t get to go home.”

  And she opened her hand. In a blur of motion like released elastic, the cherubs vanished.

  The man with the splint put a hand on Autumn’s shoulder. “Good witch,” he said.

  Autumn turned to look at him with an expression which said she still wasn’t sure.

  * * *

  When the human witch had burst into the knot at the centre of the worlds, the shardling had seen the path home and seized its moment.

  It had been relieved to take three steps and then find itself once again where it had been conceived, inside the long shadow that had fallen across the barrow of the court of the fairy king.

  It relaxed. It had completed its mission.

  It had been one of many sent out to map the disturbances of the boundaries, to swiftly bring back the information the king needed, now he was in the shadow, the information that would lead to war.

  Because in the moment before it had left, it had seen the witch build a simple, single boundary. It was nothing like what had been there before. It would be easy to breach. The shardling felt a moment of satisfaction at having this information to return to its master.

  The mind of the shardling only lasted for a moment longer before the king reached out and absorbed it back into himself. The knowledge was shared. The moment of satisfaction became a moment of anticipation.

  The preparations for the attack began.

  * * *

  As the bells of the church chimed six, Autumn slowly and carefully unlocked the door of her magic shop, her two friends beside her. She felt like a different person from who she’d been the last time she was here, that morning.

  Marcin had hugged her, and had thanked her profusely in English and Polish, had shown her a picture of his family, who she now felt she knew really well, having already experienced them inside his head. Now he could return to them. Even though . . . he’d made steering wheel gestures and Autumn had had to take a while to explain that his lorry was still lying there now, miles from the road in the real woods, the moment of time it had been trapped in having expired. It hadn’t been left in fairy like the barn had been. Autumn felt dimly that she’d managed to arrange that on her way out of the structure of threads. Judith had got Lizzie to call Shaun on her mobile, and had taken the phone from her and sternly told her son that the lorry driver had been found and fought off some hijackers, heroically getting injured in the proc
ess. Apparently they’d used a helicopter to lift the . . . no, she’d interrupted his incredulous outburst, this was one of her sort of things, and so was Rory Holt, who was alive and well and would by now be back at his house and ready to tell a story that nobody would or should believe, and all the ravers were fine too, and did he have any more damn fool questions?

  So Marcin, to Autumn’s relief, had been able to go on his way with a reasonable future ahead of him. Result.

  They sat down at the table in Autumn’s workroom. Which was now clean, she realised, with nothing boiling itself on the stove. “Thank you,” she said to Judith, now feeling unable to look at her. The old witch must have given some of her remaining energy to do that.

  “Thank you,” Judith replied, as though the words were from a foreign language.

  “Well,” said Lizzie, “this is better.”

  “Isn’t anyone,” said Judith, “going to make some bloody tea?”

  * * *

  So Lizzie made the tea. And listened, as she did so, to Judith and Autumn continuing to thank and apologise to each other, like nations who’d been at war and didn’t quite know why. That was always, in her experience, the most wonderful sound. Judith was still an employee, Autumn still an apprentice, and who’d ever thought otherwise? Judith wanted to emphasise, Autumn having seen inside her head, that she’d been in her right mind when she’d voted, but no, she still wouldn’t say which way that’d been. If Autumn didn’t know already. Then Autumn, having moved swiftly past that, in whispers, was trying to persuade Judith to tell Lizzie something, but Judith was hesitant. That was okay. From the glimpse Lizzie had got inside her friend’s head, she could guess what sort of thing this might be.

  She put the mugs and teapot and a packet of Hobnobs down between them and decided to ask about wider issues. “What about all the people who now know about magic?”

  “Nobody’s going to believe those kids,” said Judith, “and the smart ones won’t try to tell anyone. Same for the lorry driver. He seems to know which side his bread’s buttered. Rory Holt’s going to tell everyone, for the rest of his days, and nobody will believe him, which sounds like the world’s worked out a curse for him. Surprising how often there are just desserts.”

  “Or not,” said Lizzie. “Can we find out what’s happening in fairy?”

  “I’ll send messages to Finn,” said Autumn. “I’m worried about him. What happened to you isn’t something he’d have been up for, if he knew about it.”

  “If he could stop it,” said Judith. “It wouldn’t be the first time there have been ructions in fairy. If they war on each other, we’ll know about it. So will the world if we’re not careful.”

  Lizzie went to point three on her short mental list. “And what are we going to do about the boundaries?”

  “I tried to build a very rough one,” said Autumn. “Okay, let’s say it out loud, I ended up building a bloody wall.”

  Judith actually chuckled. Autumn immediately looked angry again. Lizzie looked sharply at Judith. Her smile was as thin as the smile on a fish, but it looked genuine. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “I didn’t mean it was your just desserts. Well, maybe a bit.”

  “I don’t want it,” said Autumn, still clearly requiring some terms and conditions here. “I want a proper border that treats all these worlds with respect and works on a case-by-case basis. I mean it. Not joking.”

  “Well, this’ll be up to you, won’t it?” said Judith. “What you put up, with what we put in place, will hold until someone has a real go at it. But we can’t leave it. And we can’t wait until I’ve got my strength back.” If, thought Lizzie, privately, she ever did. “So you two will have to sort out what you want and build it. Soon.”

  Autumn looked a bit taken aback. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks for . . . trusting—”

  “No, we’ve had too many thanks already,” said Judith, “soft, both of you. And of course I trust you to . . . listen, you’ve made me say it, ’cos I’m going to have to start saying a lot of things now. This was why you messing up like that hurt so much—”

  Lizzie looked to Autumn, but she shook her head, she wanted to hear this.

  “—you, girl, are my choice to continue when I’m gone. To be the wise woman of this town. You’ll have help from the vicar here, and maybe others’ll come along, but someone’ll have to do the lifting, and it won’t be me forever. You and your . . . science,” she let the word slip out like it was sour, “maybe that’s the shape of what’s to come. And the give and take of someone your age, that room for mercy, that’ll be needed too. I just need you to . . . to not fly off at every enormous wanker, to be strong enough to be looked at like you’re odd for the long haul.”

  “I . . . think I’m qualified—” Autumn was trying hard not to cry, and failing.

  “Now I’ve seen in your noggin I know that. I know that you had a head start with that. Oh my girl. My girl. I don’t know how long I got left.” And Judith had to put a hand over her mouth and close her eyes. But she left one hand on the table. Autumn and then Lizzie put theirs on top of hers. And they stayed like that for a long time.

  Acknowledgments

  As well as my wonderful editor on all three of these books, Lee Harris, I’d like to thank Jaine Fenn and sensitivity reader Dee Mamora, who’s given me excellent insights. Go find her on Twitter, you can hire her too!

  About the Author

  © Lou Abercrombie, 2015

  PAUL CORNELL is a writer of science fiction and fantasy in prose, comics, and television, one of only two people to be Hugo Award nominated for all three media. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he’s written Doctor Who for the BBC, Wolverine for Marvel, and Batman and Robin for DC. He’s won the BSFA Award for his short fiction and an Eagle Award for his comics, and he shared in a Writers’ Guild Award for his TV work.

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  Also by Paul Cornell

  THE LYCHFORD SERIES

  Witches of Lychford

  The Lost Child of Lychford

  THE SHADOW POLICE SERIES

  London Falling

  The Severed Streets

  Who Killed Sherlock Holmes

  Chalk

  British Summertime

  Something More

  A Better Way to Die (collection)

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Paul Cornell

  Copyright Page

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A LONG DAY IN LYCHFORD

  Copyright © 2017 by Paul Cornell

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph © Mark Owen/Arcangel

  Cover design by FORT

  Edited by Lee Harris

  A Tor.com Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  ISBN 978-0-7653-9317-3 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9318-0 (trade paperback)

  First Edition: Oct
ober 2017

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