The fact of it was, until coming to Cairndale, Oskar Czekowisz and his giant Lymenion had been savagely, ferociously alone; not just alone but lonely: lonely in Gdansk, picking through garbage in the winding streets while the dogs lurked and kept their distance; lonely in the crumbling stalls of the old stables, behind that old couple’s stone farmhouse, somewhere north of Lebork; lonely in the ruined tower above the windswept darkness of the Baltic Sea. He knew the locals feared him wherever he went; he knew the stories they told of a white-haired boy and his monster. So he kept away. Until one evening, when a stout man, red-faced, with auburn whiskers and a grim smile, came trudging up the long dirt road to the tower, oak staff in one hand, a windblown coat snapping sharply out behind him. He wore a bright yellow checkered suit and waistcoat, like a slash of color in that landscape. Oskar in those days spoke only Polish; he was ten years old; and the man, Coulton—for that is who it was—spoke only English. And so Coulton sat patiently outside the tower gate for three nights, waiting. And on the third night, when Oskar sent Lymenion to frighten him, Coulton just rolled his powerful shoulders like he was sore from sitting so long, and he stretched, and he smiled.
Now Oskar and Lymenion and the others crept quickly and silently through the manor, and out into the courtyard, and around the gatehouse and across the wet lawn. They were all wearing the same ghostly Cairndale robes, pale gray in color, thick enough to keep the chill out, and under these the white Cairndale nightshirts and nightgowns, woven of rough cotton.
A fog had descended. As they fanned out across the grass, they looked spectral and eerie in the gloom. They ran silent and swift and when the manor had receded back into the fog and its lights haloed and dimmed they slowed and, breathing hard, they walked.
Oskar was surprised to see Charlie fall in beside him. Lymenion struggled to keep up, his thick legs working, his stout arms swinging. He always had such trouble. Komako was out ahead across the grass, an apparition in her pale robe, Ribs’s headless nightgown and robe flapping emptily through the grass beside her. If the girls spoke, it was only to each other.
“You’ve been to see the Spider before, Oskar?” Charlie asked.
Oskar cleared his throat, suddenly shy. “Yes,” he mumbled. “I mean … no. Sort of? I mean, we all know what he is, we’ve all been to the island. But you don’t get to see the Spider when you go. He’s in a, uh, a different part.”
“Why do you go to the island?” said Marlowe.
The boy was walking next to Lymenion, not bothered, looking with interest at his features, and seeing this Oskar felt strangely relieved.
“You’ll go too,” he said. “Both of you. Miss Davenshaw will take you. It’s because of the orsine. She’ll show you what it is, how it works.”
“What’s on the other side?” asked Marlowe. His skin looked pallid and ghostly in the dark. “Is it frightening?”
Oskar shrugged, embarrassed. “It’s where the spirits are,” he said lamely. Truth was, he didn’t know much. “The world beyond the orsine is where the dead go, when they die. I heard Mr. Nolan talking about it once. He’s one of the old talents. He said it’s … it’s like if this world was a sheet of paper, and you folded it, and then folded it again. And then you tried to draw a line over all the folded-up surface. It just feels … wrong. It just feels like a wrong place.”
“Because you have to be dead first,” said Marlowe.
In the fog, Oskar felt Lymenion turn his attention on the boy.
“But how would he know?” asked Charlie. “If he’s never been there, how would he know?”
Oskar blushed, feeling suddenly foolish. “I wondered about that too.”
“Maybe he did go there,” said Marlowe.
But Oskar knew that was impossible. “No one can go inside the orsine.”
They descended the dark slope, their feet hissing in the wet grass. The fog parted; Oskar saw the flat black table of the loch; the fog thickened again.
“You have to be dead first,” Marlowe repeated softly to himself.
* * *
Charlie heard the soft wash of the loch on the stony shore but he didn’t see it because of the fog, didn’t see it at all, not until his shoes had splashed right down into it, and he felt Oskar’s hand on his sleeve, pulling him back.
“Careful,” said the boy, in his quiet way. “The dock is this way.”
“Come on, you lot,” called Ribs, from ahead. Charlie could see her disembodied robes stalking back and forth in the fog.
Near him, the flesh giant’s breathing came thick and labored. There was something strange and dreamlike about it all, so alien was it from the world he’d known all his life, the cruelty of Natchez. He kept thinking about his father, not much older than he was now, losing his talent, going out alone into the world. Did his mother know anything about his father’s other life, what he’d once been able to do? Did he hide it from her, that sadness, the sense of loss? Charlie saw a slender young man alone in a wet alley, his frock coat fraying, and he filled with a sadness all his own. He still didn’t know what to make of it. He reached for Marlowe’s hand.
The dock was a gray weathered contraption that had sunk on one side, maybe fifty years old, and it led crookedly out over the dark water. At its end was moored a solitary rowboat, big enough for the five of them, and Lymenion too, a cold lantern on a pole rising from its bow. Charlie heard a noise; then Komako came rattling along the dock, oars in her arms.
Marlowe was staring out at the loch. “It’s big. I didn’t know it was so big, Charlie.”
“They say it has no bottom,” whispered Oskar.
“Rrrh,” mumbled the flesh giant.
“For God’s sake,” said Komako, brushing past them, climbing nimbly into the boat, her long braid swaying. “It has a bottom. It’s just deep, is all.” She steadied the boat’s lantern on its chains, and opened the glass door. She peeled off her gloves, cupped her raw fingers around the little candle stub in its wax. Slowly she squeezed her hands into fists.
The candle bloomed into flame.
“Oh,” breathed Charlie, amazed.
Komako blushed.
“Aw it’s just friction,” grumbled Ribs, from close by. “It ain’t magic, Charlie.”
He felt Ribs take his hand. Her fingers were warm. She half dragged him off the dock, into the back of the boat, the boat rocking and banging as they got in. Ribs held his hand a moment longer than needed and then she let it go.
Oskar’s flesh giant took the oars. A shine of mucus dripped from the handles where it gripped them, and soon they were sculling away from the dock, turning, pulling powerfully across the loch.
The fog thinned as they passed away from the land. All was silence; the chill of the air on the water seeped through Charlie’s robe; the soft splash of the oars and the sleek weightless sensation as they sped over the surface made him sleepy. They were halfway across when Komako reached back, shuttered the lantern. He snapped awake.
“Look,” she said.
Above the island, in the air and in the leaves of the great wych elm, Charlie could see thousands of tiny glowing specks, like fireflies. Not drifting, really, so much as lifting upward into the black sky, a cyclone of fiery blossoms, winking and sparking as they went. Charlie had never seen anything so beautiful.
“It’s the orsine,” said Komako. “The Spider’s generating the orsine.”
“What does it mean?” asked Marlowe.
“Means he’s awake,” said Ribs. But there was a new tone in her voice, subdued, wary.
They tied up at an ancient dock even more sloped and crooked than the first, and followed a steep trail up the rocky face of the island. Komako had unhooked the lantern and its weak spill of light illuminated the root-strewn path. At the top of the cliff loomed the ruins. A vast dark canopy of branches soared up out of the broken stones. That was the great wych elm.
It had been a refuge of several buildings once, all of them now collapsed. The island had a creepy, haunted air to it, as if something watched them. Charlie followed Komako and Ribs into the only standing building, the largest, its roof long since rotted away. It had been the monastery chapel; now flagstones were missing from the floor, and shrubs and roots had burst up everywhere, desiccated leaves blown up against the shadows. Where the altar should have been, the huge dark silence of the wych elm now grew: a massive sprawl of roots, spilling out on all sides.
Komako didn’t lead them that far. She stopped at a small apse in the southerly wall and set the lantern down and brushed away a layer of dirt from the ground. Underneath lay a wooden door. The flesh giant turned the ring, lightly, easily, as if it weighed nothing, and hauled the door groaning upward. A dank gasp of air came out. Inside was a stone stair, descending into a greater darkness.
“Uh,” said Charlie, looking around at the others. “Wait. We’ve got to go down there?”
“You’re not afraid of the dark, Charlie?” Komako grinned. “What can hurt you down there?”