I’m lying on the ground in the walled garden. The sun has dropped behind the buildings and the shade has slid over me. The tree’s leaves are gently swaying in the breeze. The sky is blue, dotted with small, thin white clouds. It’s still sunny and bright up there.
I’ve been through the will-he-come, won’t-he-come thoughts and now I’m just waiting, staring up at the tree and the leaves and the sky. The leaves are hardly moving. In fact, they aren’t moving at all . . . I stare at one branch and I’m right: none of the leaves are moving, not even a slight tremor. And the little clouds: they were moving slowly left to right but the small one that is behind the branch above me is in exactly the same position as a minute ago, as a few minutes ago.
I sit up and at that moment the gate opens.
Marcus sees me and stops. For a second, I think he’s going to leave straightaway but he comes into the garden and closes the gate.
I’m standing, though I don’t remember getting up.
He turns to me but doesn’t come forward. “I take it Gus brought you here?” he says. It’s the usual enthusiastic welcome.
“Yes. I wanted to speak to you.”
“We don’t have long. I use the magic to stop things, to give me time to scout out an area, check for traps.”
“I’m not a trap.”
“No, I don’t believe you are.” He comes to stand in front of me and I realize how similar we are: the same height, the same face and hair, and exactly the same eyes. “But still I’d prefer to make it short.”
“I know you don’t want to spend any time with me, don’t worry. But I need to tell you what’s happening with the Council of White Witches and a group of rebels.”
“And with you?”
“If you’re interested.”
“I’m always interested in you, Nathan. But our circumstances mean that short is usually a lot sweeter.” He looks up. “I can’t risk staying here any longer.” He goes to the gate and opens it.
I can’t believe that’s it. Hello and good-bye. One look at me and he’s out of here.
“Aren’t you coming?” he asks.
“What?”
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“Um, yes. Course.”
He walks through the gate and I trip in my rush to follow him. Once through he locks it with a similar key to the one Gus has and starts to walk away, saying over his shoulder, “Do your best to keep up.”
a a a
*
I’m running after Marcus and it feels amazing to be with someone so fast. In the next street, we pass a car as it starts to move and, within a few strides, time is back to normal. We keep running. The houses end and we’re in a wood of slender young trees and ferns, running uphill and over the brow. The countryside is gently sloping down and it gets much steeper and I’m almost out of control, taking huge strides to keep my balance, and there’s no way I can stop, no way I want to stop, and the river is ahead of us and Marcus runs at it and leaps out over it and turns a somersault in the air and dives into the water.
I do my best to copy him and manage a dive. The water is cold and a shock but in a few seconds I’m used to it. My father isn’t swimming so neither am I. We’re floating but moving fast, carried along in the current. The banks are wood-lined, the city upstream in the distance, and we’re just bobbing along in the middle of the dark river, the sky pale blue ahead of us, the sun below the hills to our left.
Then Marcus swims fast but easily to the left bank and I keep close to him. I think he’s going to climb out of the river but he takes hold of my hand and puts it on his belt, saying, “Keep hold of that. Take a deep breath. Stay with me through the cut.”
I sink and swim with him toward the bank of the river. The water is slower here and so clear that I can count the stones on the bottom, which Marcus seems to be navigating by grabbing one and then another to pull himself along. When we get to a large flat stone I see him reach behind it and he slips down into an impossibly tiny crack and I’m being sucked through with him from the bright, gray, cold water of the river to empty darkness that feels even colder, and I’m spinning round but remembering to breathe out too as Nesbitt told me. I’m spinning fast and the cut is so long that I run out of air and I’m desperately looking for light at the end but there’s none and all I can do is concentrate on holding on to the leather of my father’s belt.
I’m spewed out of the cut and suck in a new breath, and another, and another.
I try to look as if the experience wasn’t that bad so I straighten up but I feel my heart pounding. I have to bend over, breathe, get air. I laugh. That was serious.
I’m on my knees in the shallows of a river. This is definitely a different one: much smaller, though powerful and fast too.
Marcus is already sitting on the bank. I get up and wobble a bit and hope he hasn’t seen. I sit next to him. “You still use cuts, even though Hunters can find them?”