‘He wouldn’t have had a choice,’ she said, sounding suddenly far more adult.
We still hadn’t found him after half an hour. If he had gone back to town, he couldn’t have missed the lights; if he was anywhere nearby and conscious, he certainly couldn’t have missed them. After barely half a mile, the front of the line reached a place where there was only a narrow path between the border and cliff, blocked with snow. Inti turned everyone back the other way and still there was nothing.
Clem came to walk with us.
‘Where do you think he’s gone?’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t buy that he’s been snatched. We would have seen something in the pollen, or you would have.’
‘I think he went out without a coat and it’s minus God knows. He can’t feel heat or cold. There’s something wrong with him.’
‘Christ.’ He looked out through the trees. ‘We should be looking over the border.’
‘We can’t go over the border.’
He made a face at me. ‘Gone native, have you?’
‘A bit,’ I sighed.
‘Well, let’s put it to Inti.’
But when we did, she shook her head. ‘No. You’ll be killed.’
‘But if he is out there, he isn’t very far in,’ I said. ‘I saw him go. He’ll be only just out of sight. It’s bitter out here, it’s a miracle nothing’s ever happened to him before. He was just in his waistcoat and shirt. I saw.’
She was shaking her head again. ‘No. If that’s what happened then – then it’s what they wanted.’
‘Who, the people in the woods? Why is what they want so important?’
Clem caught my arm. ‘They don’t see them like people, old man,’ he said quietly. ‘Listen to her. I told you, it’s religious. The salt line isn’t just about crippled and not crippled; it’s about unclean and holy, humans and angels. Flesh and stone.’ He nodded to the markayuq. ‘You and I are thinking of a town in there with gutters and markets and weavers, but that’s not what it means here. They’re looking at it like heaven, or Eden, and Raphael is a kind of Nephilim with one foot in either world. You’re running up against God’s will, almost. Am I right?’ he added to Inti. He had said it in Spanish.
She nodded, and looked faintly appalled that I hadn’t understood before. ‘Well – of course. Merry-cha, if they want him, you can’t try and fetch him back.’
‘Inti,’ I said. ‘For God’s sake. They don’t. They don’t even know he’s there. He could be dying.’
She caught my arm before I could cross the salt.
‘You can’t cross,’ she said, as if I were talking about going to the moon.
‘I can see him,’ Maria said, not loudly. I almost didn’t hear. She broke away from me and ran over the border before anyone could stop her. She had a bumbling, little-girl run and she laughed as she went.
Inti yelled and so did everyone else. Maria didn’t come back. I started after her but Inti caught my arm and a man with one eye snatched the back of Clem’s shirt. He was her brother, or I thought I’d heard her call him that.
‘For God’s sake, she can’t—’
‘Inti—’
‘Wait!’ she said over us. ‘Just wait. They might bring her back. She’s really just a little girl; they might bring her back.’
We could all see Maria’s pollen trail. It wove as she tried to find whatever it was she had seen. People were calling to her but if she heard she paid no attention and I had a sinking feeling in my diaphragm. She was about seven, on the inside. No amount of calling would have made much of a dent on me when I was that age if I’d seen Dad over an arbitrary line in the ground.
Another trail flared as it came out from behind a tree.
Clem caught my sleeve. ‘Christ, is that him?’
I shook my head. ‘Can’t tell.’ But it was moving wrongly for Raphael, and although it was difficult to judge in nothing but light and black, I was nearly sure it was taller than me. Other people thought so too and the shouts took on a raw edge. Inti was quiet.
When the man reached her, Maria’s pollen ghost straightened up as if someone had said something to her. They came back together. Whoever it was shepherded her, slightly in front of him. He didn’t come all the way but stopped just behind the roots of a tree to watch her keep going and around him the pollen started to fade. Maria’s light trail resolved into Maria herself as she came into the lamplight. Someone snatched her back over the salt.
‘Maria, you silly girl,’ Inti burst out. ‘What will we tell your poor mother?’
Maria seemed not to mind. ‘I saw Raphael,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. He isn’t stolen.’
‘Who brought you back?’ I said.
‘St Thomas did,’ she replied, and everyone seemed to think that was a perfectly good answer.
‘Well, you’re damn lucky he recognised you,’ Inti said, still shaken. ‘Come on, let’s find you some holy water.’
I stared hard at the place where the man beyond the border had stopped and moved away from the crowd so that I’d see the last of the pollen glow undrowned by everyone’s lamps. It was there, just, an afterglow still hanging in the air where he had walked. I lost it behind trees sometimes because they were so broad, and sometimes it looked as if he had walked under their high roots, but I followed the trail in stops and starts along the salt. It turned towards the border about halfway along, a straight right-angle of half-light whose end I didn’t see before the wind gusted and sparked the pollen fresh, destroying the tiny glow that had been left. But the line had been there and I followed it. I had to bypass another tree before I could see where the trail would have come out, if it had come out. It was where St Thomas had been standing before, but, although the grass and the frost were dented from the weight, there was no statue there now.
Clem had hurried after me, and Inti’s brother.
‘How did they do that?’ I said after a long silence.
‘They could have . . . moved the original statue behind a tree and dressed a man up,’ Clem said slowly. ‘Make a bit of a show.’
I couldn’t imagine anyone being able to move a markayuq with any subtlety. ‘What for?’
‘To prove there’s someone there. To prove to us that there’s someone there. To keep us out.’
I had closed my teeth too tightly and when I spoke again I heard a tiny crackle of cartilage inside my jaw, like I’d bitten a few grains of sugar.
‘Sounds to me,’ Clem added when I didn’t say anything, ‘like he’s gone talk to them about us, doesn’t it. Perhaps give them a bit of a warning to watch out, if we can’t clear the snow on the path. I suspect he’s less missing than we think.’