When he still couldn’t find her after an hour, he gave up. She would come back eventually and, if she didn’t, he would go out again when he was awake instead of nearly sleepwalking. He paused, leaning against a tree, to brush a blue butterfly from the back of his sleeve. With his head resting against the bark he closed his eyes for a second, feeling heavy. He didn’t usually mind being so bound to one place, but sometimes he could feel the weight of the anchor. The chain would barely stretch to Azangaro, never mind to England. When he opened his eyes, his breath steamed.
He couldn’t move. He was clamped into place by something. It was a vine, candle ivy, thick and twined around his chest and his arm, pulling it behind his back. He wasn’t standing; his whole weight was being held up, a foot clear of the ground, by roots that had grown up under him and formed round him. They were grey with frost. It was only panic strength that let him tear through. Once he had half-fallen out of it, the tree was a monstrous broken cage. He raked his hands through his hair. There were strands of frozen web caught in it. It was plainly winter and there was nothing alive anywhere, but it made him shudder so hard it hurt his shoulder when he thought of what summer must have been like. When he looked down at himself, his clothes were rags where the branches hadn’t saved them from the weather, but he didn’t feel cold. Ground frost crunched under him. The forest floor was springy with pine needles.
The trees on the way back to the border had changed. The roots had interlaced. He had to climb to get through, and when he found the graveyard, Anka was there, sleeping now; they had a different quality of stillness when they were asleep. He found the border, still well kept, and almost bumped into a little boy cleaning St Thomas. The boy stared at him. Thomas recognised him and touched his arm with one knuckle. He could be expressive; it had the quality of, you’re late.
‘Um . . . good morning, sir,’ the boy managed.
‘Morning,’ he said. He couldn’t tell if the boy was one he’d known as a baby, but he didn’t think so. There was nothing wrong with him. They had sent one, finally. In another few years, he could leave. ‘What – can you tell me what year it is?’
The boy was still little enough to be asked about arbitrary facts and he didn’t stumble over it like an adult would have. ‘Eighteen fifty-six, sir.’
He had to rock back a step. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Is there a priest at the church?’
‘No, sir. The church is empty. No one goes in unless there are visitors.’
‘I see. Thank you.’
Raphael left him there and went to the church. The door was locked but like it always would, a decent shove just at shoulder height juddered the latch open. Inside, everything was cold and still. Despite what the little boy had said, he had half, abortively hoped it wasn’t real and that Harry would be there just the same, but he was gone. Nobody had been there for a long time. The air tasted undisturbed.
Everything had been cleared away, neatened up, but it was all there. Don Quixote was still on the table, closed on what looked like the right page over a letter. When he slipped it out, the ink on the envelope had faded to a strange brown. It was addressed to him. He opened it.
Raphael,
You’ve been gone for a month and I must go home. But I’ll come back. Write to me when you see this.
Harry
There was an address in England underneath. He read it twice more and eventually he put it down and dragged himself up the ladder to see if his clothes were still there. They were, and the bolt of Indian cotton Harry had brought. He didn’t look at it. Instead he found some warm things to take downstairs and draped them over the chairs to air while he set the windmill going and waited for water. He expected the rope to break after so long, but someone must have come in and kept it turning every now and then. He built the stove up very slowly, trying to ease the heat into the pipes instead of rushing it all in at once. They creaked but didn’t burst.
He was cleaner than he would have thought but not clean. He scrubbed it all off, too hard, and had to stop when he scratched himself. He didn’t feel it. He stood watching points of blood well in the mark on his arm and waited, but there was nothing. He could feel the pressure but not the sting.
More slowly, because his hands had started to shake, he got dressed again and then didn’t know what to do next once he was. After a long, limbo silence, he sat down in front of the book and touched it gradually, afraid to set the weight of his hand on it, but it didn’t turn to dust. He found the place easily, because the print was faded where it had sat for a long time in the sun. The paper should have been cold, but he couldn’t feel that either.
Someone tapped on the door. He didn’t say anything, because he felt four miles to the side of it all, but a woman came in. She was holding a flask and a bowl that steamed.
‘This is for you,’ she said. She waited until he took it. She was neat and quick as a robin, tall, with only one hand. He saw her scan him and the little lift of her head when she noticed he was healthy. ‘My son told me that he found you on the border. He said that St Thomas knew you and that you enquired after the date?’
‘Was it right, what he said?’
‘It was. Twenty-third of July, eighteen fifty-six. Were you expecting something else?’
He nodded.
‘You’re him, aren’t you?’ she said. It wasn’t a real question. She didn’t sound surprised. ‘Everyone wondered what had happened to you.’
‘Delayed. Why is there no one else here?’ he asked.
‘No other priest? Nobody knows,’ she said. ‘There was no sufficiently healthy person until Aquila.’ She looked around, worried. ‘It should all have been maintained as you left it.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘Are the pipes functioning properly?’
‘So far,’ he said, wondering why she was talking to him as if they were in an official report for Lima. ‘I’ve got spares if they’re not. Or I had.’
‘No one’s disturbed anything,’ she said quickly. ‘But I’m not sure it was ever inventoried, so perhaps a few items might have, you know, over the years . . .’
‘I think it’s all here.’ He stopped, because it had occurred to him, piecemeal, that she wasn’t being lofty at all. Her tone was wrong for that. The language had changed. There was more Spanish in it. ‘Is that coffee?’
‘It is.’
He took down a pair of cups and rinsed away the dust, and shared out the coffee between them. It steamed, but he couldn’t feel the heat of it. He couldn’t tell if he’d burned himself.
‘You’d better eat, before it goes cold,’ she said, nodding at the stew in front of him. It was rich. They must have been doing well.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not hungry.’ Breakfast had been seventy years before, but only an hour ago.
‘You should eat it anyway. You’ll be hungry in a minute.’
‘Why?’
She nodded at the window, to the overgrown courtyard outside. People were starting to gather there in twos and threes. More were coming from over the bridge.
‘You’ve seventy years of baptisms and confessions to do.’
He had to eat slowly, because his taste had changed, or rather, faded. It was barely there.
‘I’m Inti,’ she said, and his eyes must have caught on her for too long, because she twisted her nose. ‘I know. I didn’t select it. My mother wanted a boy.’
‘Raphael.’