Page 57 of The Bedlam Stacks

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.’

Rather than go back to her own house, Inti stayed with us at the church and sat by the stove for a long time. She must have known I was on the edge of crossing the salt, because she brought her brother, who could have stopped me just by standing in the doorway. He was a quietly mannered man, polite, but there was no escaping why he was there and in a graceless and resentful sort of way I made them both coffee and watched them wince over it. Neither of them had as much difficulty moving about as I did.

‘We’re going to have to get his things together,’ she said to me. ‘Aquila will live here now.’

‘Inti, it’s been less than a day,’ I said. ‘He might—’