Suzanna looked towards Immacolata, whose wretched features were all disbelief. She was trembling from head to foot, as if she might fall to the ground in a fit. Suzanna took her chance. She'd no way of knowing if she could survive a sustained attack from the Incantatrix, and now was certainly no time to put the problem to the test. As the third sister threw herself amongst the Magdalene's litter, and began to wail, Suzanna took to her heels.

The tide of the Fugue was lapping all around them now, and the brilliant air camouflaged her flight. Only after she'd covered ten yards or more did she come to her senses and remember Jerichau. There had been no sign of him in the vicinity of the dead Magdalene. Praying that he had found his way off the battlefield, she ran on, the Hag's harrowing din loud in her ears.

2.

She ran and ran, believing over and over that she felt the chill of the Virgin on her neck. But it seemed she imagined the pursuit, for she ran unhindered for a mile or more, up the slope of the valley and over the crest of a hill, until the light of the Weave's forthcoming was dim behind her.

It would only be a short time before the Fugue reached her, and when it did she would need to have some strategy. But first she had to catch her breath.

The gloom nursed her awhile. She stood trying not to think too hard of what she'd just done. But a certain ungovernable elation filled her. She had killed the Magdalene; destroyed one of the Three: it was no minor feat. Had the power in her always been so dangerous?; ripening behind her ignorance, growing wise, growing lethal?

For some reason she remembered Mimi's book, which pre- sumably Hobart still had in his possession. Now more than ever she hoped it could teach her something of what she was, and how to profit by it. She would have to get the volume back, even if it meant confronting Hobart once more.

As she formulated this thought she heard her name uttered, or an approximation of it. She looked in the direction of the voice, and there, standing a few yards from her, was Jeri-chau.

He had indeed escaped the Magdalene's grasp, though his face was scored by the sister's ethereal fingers. His wracked frame was on the verge of collapse, and even as he called Suzanna's name a second time, and threw his withered arms out towards her, his legs gave way beneath him and he fell face down on the ground.

She was kneeling by his side in moments, and turning him over. He was feather-light. The sisters had drained him of all but the spark of purpose that had sent him stumbling after her. Blood they could take; and seed and muscle. Love he'd kept.

She drew him up towards her. His head lolled against her breasts. His breathing was fast and shallow, his cold body full of tremors. She stroked his head; the diminishing light around it playing about her fingers.

He was not content simply to be cradled, however, but pushed himself away from her body a few inches in order to reach up and touch her face. The veins in his throat throbbed as he tried to speak. She hushed him, saying there would be time to talk later. But he made a tiny shake of his head, and she could feel as she held him how close the end was. She did him no kindness to pretend otherwise. It was time to die, and he had sought out her arms as a place to perform that duty.

'Oh my sweet...' she said, her chest aching. '... sweet man...'

Again he strove for words, but his tongue cheated him. Only soft sounds came, which she could make no sense of.

She leaned closer to him. He no longer resisted her comforting, but took hold of her shoulder and drew himself closer still to speak to her. This time she made a sense of the words, though they were scarcely more than sighs.

'I'm not afraid,' he said, expelling the last word on a breath that had no brother, but came against her cheek like a kiss.

Then his hand lost its strength, and slipped from her shoulder, his eyes closed, and he was gone from her.

A bitter thought came visiting: that his last words were as much a plea as a statement. Jerichau had been the only one she'd ever told about how at the warehouse the menstruum had stirred Cal from unconsciousness. Was that I'm not afraid his way of saying: leave me to death?; I wouldn't thank you for resurrection?

Whatever he'd meant she'd never find out now.

She laid him gently on the earth. Once, he'd spoken words of love that had defied their condition, and become light. Were there others he knew, that defied Death, or was he already on his way to that region Mimi had left for, all contact with the world Suzanna still occupied broken?

It seemed so. Though she watched the body 'til her eyes ached, it made no murmur. He had left it to the earth, and her with it.

XI.

CAL, TRAVELLING NORTH.

1.

Cal's journey North dragged on through the night, but he didn't weary. Perhaps it was the fruit that kept his senses so preternaturally clear; either that or a new-found sense of purpose that pressed him forward. He kept his analytic faculties on hold, making decisions as to his route instinctively.

Was it the same sense the pigeons had possessed that he now navigated by? A dream-sense, beyond the reach of intellect or reason: a homing? That was how it felt. That he'd become a bird, orienting himself not by the stars (they were blotted by clouds), nor by the magnetic pole, but by the simple urge to go home; back to the orchard, where he'd stood in a ring of loving faces and spoken Mad Mooney's verse.

As he drove he ransacked his head for other such fragments, so that he'd have something fresh to perform next time. Little rhymes came back from childhood, odd lines that he'd learned more for their music than their meaning.

'Naked Heaven comes and goes, Spits out seas and dyes the rose, Puts on coats of wind and rain And simply takes them off again.'

He was no more certain of what some were about now than he'd been as a child, but they came to his lips as if fresh-minted, secure in their rhythms and rhymes.

XII.

RESOLUTION.

1.

Suzanna sat beside Jerichau's body for a long while, thinking, while trying all the time not to think. Down the hill the unweaving was still going on; the tide of the Fugue approaching her. But she couldn't face the beauty of it, not at the moment. When the threads started to come within fifty yards of her she retreated, leaving Jerichau's body where it lay.

Dawn was paling the clouds overhead. She decided to climb to higher ground so as to have an overview when day came. The higher she went the windier it became; a bitter wind, from the North. But it was worth the shivering, for the promontory she stood upon offered her a fine panorama, and as the day strengthened she realized just how cannily Shadwell had selected this valley. It was bounded on all sides by steep hills, whose slopes were bereft of any building, however humble. Indeed the only sign of human presence was the primitive track the convoy had followed to get here, which had most likely been used more in the last twenty-four hours than it had in its entire span hitherto.

It was on that road, as dawn brought colour to the hills, that she saw the car. It crept along the ridge of the hill a little way, then came to a halt. Its driver, minuscule from Suzanna's vantage point, got out and surveyed the valley. It seemed the Fugue below was not visible to such a casual witness, for the driver got back into the car almost immediately as if realizing that he'd taken a wrong turning. He didn't drive away how-

Some had a bitter sting: 'The pestilence of families Is not congenital disease But feet that follow where the foot That has proceeeded them was put.'

Others were fragments from poems which he'd either forgotten or never been taught in their entirety. One in particular kept coming back to him.

'How I love the pie-bald horses! Best of all, the pie-bald horses!'

That was the closing lines of something, he presumed, but of what he couldn't remember.

There were plenty of other fragments. He recited the lines over and over as he drove, polishing his delivery, finding a new emphasis here, a fresh rhythm there.

There was no prompting from the back of his head; the poet was quite silent. Or was it that he and Mad Mooney were finally speaking with a single voice?

2.

He crossed the border into Scotland about two-thirty in the morning and continued to drive North, the landscape becoming hillier and less populated as he drove. He was getting hungry, and his muscles were beginning to ache after so many hours of uninterrupted driving, but nothing short of Armageddon would have coaxed him to slow down or stop. With every mile he came nearer to Wonderland, in which a life too long delayed was waiting to be lived.

Part Eight

The Return

'You were about to tell me something, child-but you left off before you began '

William Congreve The Old Bachelor