Dusk and Shiver

An extract

The women are found half-buried, their arms frozen in a last desperate grab for safety, their mouths clogged with muck. Everyone calls it quicksand because of how fast it grabs your feet and drags you down, until all you can do is reach for something, for anything. The women had sealed their fate the moment they stepped off the path. Caught in the sludge, all they could do was wait for the tide to turn and for the water to rise.

Nobody on the island knew the women, and nobody paid much attention at first. They were clearly from the city, based on their clothing — at least, what clothing was recognisable after the sand had dried and crusted. If they’d been local they wouldn’t be dead, because no local would ever be foolish enough to cross the causeway when the tide was turning. Every year people are stranded on the path from the mainland to the island, and every year people drown. These were just two more to add to the list. Nobody gave the women a second thought.

Until someone bothered to cut their clothes away, and saw that they were marked.

 

*

 

She costs a lot of money. Pounds, shillings, pence, all of it, even gold pieces sometimes, or things you really shouldn’t be bartering with. She doesn’t see it all, because it goes into Athelyn’s coffers, but she’s told that it’s responsible for the bed she sleeps in, the dress she wears. She’s different. She’s special. So why, when it may take a year’s wages for half an hour of her time, do people waste that time screaming at the dead?

The woman in front of Ophelia is doing just that. Her face is red, her body coiled in outrage, and she’s arguing with her dead sister. Although, can it be called an argument if one party can’t see or hear the other? Ophelia doesn’t understand it. These visitors know that their cries won’t be returned, that whatever energy they put into their speeches will be wasted. She tells every single one of them that they must be patient, be kind, but only a handful listen. That said, she supposes it’s a shock if you think you’ll have a nice chat with dear old grandmamma, only for grandmamma to tell you to get fucked.

Wraiths are not kind.

Over the years she’s developed ways to amuse herself, to make these sessions more interesting. Sometimes she will sit up straight, her manner commanding. Other times she lounges in her chair, slumps sideways, leans her chin in her hand. Lets them know that they’re there for her and not the other way around.

Morgan likes to call it her throne. Once, years ago, he called her insouciant, and she pretended to know what it meant, when in reality she had to hurry to the library and find one of the big books of words, to dig through until she found the answer. She secretly likes being called insouciant. She likes any of the words that Morgan gives her. It’s a game, one that has been going on for as long as she can remember, each of them trying to find the perfect word for the perfect situation. If he teases her and claims to know more than she does, then she just reminds him that she’d have a better vocabulary if she had the luxury of time to read.

She returns her attention to the woman in front of her. Bella. Bella’s sister, Mariah, drowned on the causeway. She was twice-marked, and this got people’s attention. It wasn’t long before someone identified Mariah’s body, and word got back to her family. Back to Bella.

But Mariah has so far refused to speak. With each minute that has passed, Bella has grown increasingly agitated. She knows her sister is here in this room, even though she cannot hear her or see her. This fact infuriates her.

‘Why are you here if you won’t speak to me?’ Bella asks for what must be the tenth time. Ophelia has already explained that Mariah is here because she has to be, because she has been drawn from the Otherworld against her will, but Bella doesn’t understand. Their time is almost up, and Ophelia is resigning herself to the fact that this will be an unsuccessful session, when Mariah suddenly moves.

For the past hour Mariah has been nothing but a shadow, a flicker in the corner of Ophelia’s vision. When she summons wraiths to this room, they are caught in the web of her loom, tangled in the elemental threads. Some wraiths stay there until the session is complete, unable or unwilling to move. Others roam the room, darting from shadow to shadow. Many move to stand behind Ophelia, but she never turns around. She never looks anywhere except where she is meant to look.

Ophelia has been thinking that this session will end with Mariah disappearing back to the Otherworld, but now the wraith rushes forward in a dark wave. Fingers close, one by one, on Ophelia’s left shoulder, and the hairs on her neck prickle as a mouth leans in close to her ear.

‘Why won’t she be quiet?’ Mariah’s voice is an echo of what it would have once been, but there’s venom there, and this is not lost on Ophelia. But she has to repeat back whatever the wraith says.

‘Mariah wants to know why you won’t be quiet,’ she says.

Bella’s hands grip the arms of her chair as she pushes herself forward in her seat. ‘Why do you think I won’t be quiet? You disappeared! Why? Why did you leave us? Do you know what it has done to the family?’

There’s a hiss next to Ophelia’s ear. ‘She never cared about me. None of them did. He was the only one who cared, who truly understood what I was capable of.’

Ophelia doesn’t want to repeat these words. She knows how they’ll be taken. But she has to, and so she does.

Bella lets out an incredulous laugh. ‘You’ve always been selfish. Always putting yourself before the family. I shouldn’t be surprised that you left us for a man. You would’ve done anything to bring disgrace down on us.’

Ophelia can feel Mariah’s anger, but its twisted up with other emotions that are less discernible. It’s the mixed malaise of the newly dead, the jumbled mess that makes up a freshly formed wraith. This is why no one should contact someone so soon after they have died. Wraiths need time to adjust.

But Bella is not just anybody. Her family has an estate on the mainland, up north near the city. They have money. This is why Athelyn’s council has allowed Bella in today, put her in the tower with Ophelia, encouraged this session despite knowing that little will come of it. If Ophelia plays it the way she has been taught, the way she has done it so many times over the years, then Bella will leave frustrated, but not so frustrated that she won’t return.

Ophelia tries again. ‘Bella, I’m afraid that Mariah is quite confused at the moment. It’s all part of the process of death. I really feel that if you wait a few weeks, then Mariah will be able to talk.’

Mariah makes a sound that could be a laugh, and for a moment Ophelia thinks that she is leaving. But then Mariah throws herself at Bella. A dark mass of shadows streaks forward and hovers over Bella’s head. Thin arms, too long to be human, stretch from nowhere towards Bella’s face.

Mariah’s voice is a screech. ‘You know nothing. You never understood me.’

Bella looks around the room. She doesn’t sense her sister above her, hear the awful sound of her words.

‘Mariah?’ she says. ‘Are you still here?’

But the shadows curl and shrink, and then they are gone. Ophelia lets out a sigh, sinking back into her chair, glad that it’s all over —

Something clatters to the floor. Both she and Bella look towards the loom. An object lies on the stones, an object that looks like a large coin. Bella is faster than Ophelia, and she rises from her chair to scoop the object up.

‘Did she…’ Bella looks up in confusion.

Did she? Did Mariah just leave this behind? Ophelia frowns. How is that even possible? She wants to look at the object, but Bella has already tucked it into her bag. Ophelia stands, and Bella looks at her in disdain.

‘I expected more from you,’ she says.

Ophelia clasps her hands in front of her, lets her gaze fall to the ground. ‘I’m sorry that it wasn’t what you hoped. You’re welcome to return at any time.’

Bella snorts. ‘Oh yes, I’m sure you’d love that.’

Ophelia has no response, but it doesn’t matter because Bella has already thrown open the door and has disappeared down the stairs. Someone down there will meet her, take her into a private room, give her tea and soothe her. Ophelia is glad that it isn’t up to her to make visitors feel better. She’d never be able to do it. 

She wants to go downstairs, to find something to eat. But she’s thinking of the object that just appeared. She turns to look at her loom.

It resembles an enormous wooden cartwheel, jutting out on an axle from the curved stone wall. It is far larger than she is. The loom spins on its hub like a wheel, but unlike a wheel it has evenly spaced raised knobs on the rim, and instead of spokes there are countless strands of thread. Elemental thread, wound tight around the knobs and criss-crossing the centre of the loom.

She gives the loom an experimental turn. It rattles around, firelight catching on the coloured threads. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s possible that something was caught in it — something other than a wraith — and it came loose, fell to the ground. Occasionally she will weave objects into the web, at a visitor’s request. They seem to think that bringing something that belonged to their dead loved one will help, but in Ophelia’s experience, nothing helps. It’s different for the other women who work here, however. The women in the other three towers. The bonetellers and the mindmelders and the soulweavers: they all use objects other than thread. But Ophelia is a necromancer, and necromancers need nothing but elemental thread and their own minds, their own bodies.

She lets the loom come to a stop. All she can think about is food. She’s so hungry now, and she yanks opens her door, hoping that they’re having the soup she likes, the one with the mushrooms and —

But someone’s there. She smells him first, the scent of the pomade he slicks into his hair. Two eyes pierce her. Tristram.

He enters the room, shuts the door behind him and says, ‘You can’t leave.’

She stares at him. ‘I’m finished for the day.’

Tristram shakes his head. She scowls at him, then turns and flops into her seat. Her long braid falls over her shoulder, and she picks up the end, tugs at a few loose black hairs. Her schedule is off, and she’s rattled. She hides this with anger.

‘You think you can just do whatever the fuck you want, don’t you?’ she says.

Tristram gives her many looks, but there are three that stand out. The first, and most common, can best be described as withering, as if he can’t believe how utterly incompetent she is. The second, also quite common, is resentful. The third is the worst, because it does something to her brain, messes it up and tangles it in knots, makes her hot and cold at the same time. She doesn’t have a name for that one.

Right now he’s giving her a combination of withering and angry. Wangry? She smiles to herself, thinking that Morgan would like that word. But then she remembers that Morgan has no idea about her and Tristram, and the smile disappears.

Tristram always wants her to smile. He wants her to do everything with pleasure. He knows she will do what he asks, she has to, but the one thing she can refuse is to be polite about it. All she has is the ability to annoy him.

‘I hope you realise that if I die from too much weaving, it’ll be all your fault,’ she says.

He just laughs. She hates how handsome he is when he laughs. Everything about him is so assured, so arrogant. His clothes are immaculate as always, his coat and trousers neat, his shoes polished black. He never wears boots like the other men at Athelyn. He’s always dressed for the city.

He drags the visitor’s chair closer to her, sits down and says, ‘Weaving won’t kill you.’

‘I’m glad you’re so confident,’ she says, ‘because I’m not.’ She rubs the heel of her hand into her breastbone, which aches. ‘I wish you could feel this pain,’ she adds.

He rolls his eyes. ‘Gods, I’m sick of you women complaining about your pain. You’d think that you’re the only ones who ever suffer.’ He sighs, leans forward a little. ‘Why does it always have to be like this? Imagine how good it’d be if we worked together. I’d make you a goddess. I’d have everyone worshipping you, myself included.’

A familiar mix of revulsion and excitement rolls through her. ‘Can we please just get on with it? I’m hungry.’

But he continues to look at her. There are only two people in Athelyn who she can make eye contact with without feeling as though she’s shrivelling inside, or that her eyes are filled with pins: Morgan and Tristram. Yet today she’s struggling with the look he’s giving her.

‘What is it?’ she finally asks.

His gaze drops. She feels it on her arms, curious and insistent.

‘Show me,’ he says.

She pauses, but there’s no point in resisting. Her fingers loosen the buttons at the wrists of her dress. She rolls back one sleeve, then the other. Tristram reaches forward and gently takes hold of her wrists, turns them so that the insides of her arms face upwards, revealing her marks. He touches her elemental mark first, the small triangle in the crook of her left arm. He glances up at her, as though expecting something.

‘I don’t know what you’re looking for,’ she says. He’s seen her marks so many times, and she has no idea what he’s doing.

Tristram doesn’t reply. Instead he takes her right arm, holds it loosely in both his hands. The black serpent twists along the length of her inner arm, the same as always. He presses his fingers into it, a little too hard, and Ophelia yanks her arm away.

‘Are you going to explain it to me?’ she asks him.

He reaches into his pocket, pulls something out which he holds on the flat of his palm. The disc. She can see now that it’s made of wood, and that there is a carving on one side.

‘Tell me what happened,’ he says. ‘With Bella.’

So she does, and she can see something growing in his eyes, feel energy spark from his body.

‘I know the answer, but I’m still going to ask the question,’ he says. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘I haven’t even had the chance to look at it.’

He hesitates, but then holds it out for her to take. It’s heavier than she expects, the wood dark and polished smooth. On one side is a tree, an oak tree with spreading limbs.

She shrugs. ‘I don’t know what it is.’

‘Did you do something different? Feel something? A sensation in your marks?’

‘There was nothing different.’ She shifts on her seat. All she can feel right now is the pangs of hunger in her stomach and the ache in her chest. ‘Tristram, I’m starving. I have to eat.’

He considers her for another moment, then reaches into his pocket once more and pulls out a thread. She takes it, and he settles back in his chair, nods at her.

The thread is worn from years of use. She doesn’t even know who made it originally. But it’s firethread, and as such it’s still strong, and it still has that telltale glow. Most visitors leave their thread behind after a weaving, allowing it to remain on the vast web of her loom. Not Tristram.

She stands, and loops the thread over her loom, twists it around a knob just once. She sits back down, closes her eyes, takes several deep breaths. Tristram’s words about pain echo in her head, and her fists clench. She forces herself to relax, to forget Tristram. She reaches out to Siobhan, the wraith that Tristram always makes her contact.

It’s only a moment before Ophelia’s elemental mark throbs, and she feels Siobhan’s presence.

‘Hello, Siobhan,’ Ophelia says.

Siobhan’s voice is weak, resigned. ‘What does he want?’

‘Do you know what this is?’ She holds the disc out in her hand, flat on her palm. In the corner of her eye she sees Siobhan shift.

‘I’m not sure...’ Siobhan’s voice lifts a little, as though she’s interested. She moves in closer, comes to stand right behind Ophelia. The skin on her neck prickles.

‘It’s not for him,’ Siobhan says, and it’s a whisper in Ophelia’s ear. ‘He shouldn’t hold it.’

‘What is she saying?’

Tristram is leaning forward, his face intense, and Ophelia frowns at him, unable to concentrate on both him and Siobhan. She flicks her fingers at Tristram and he leans back in his chair, but only slightly.

‘Tell me again,’ Ophelia says.

She’s lost count of how many times she’s spoken to Siobhan over the years, how many times Tristram has forced this connection. But Siobhan rarely gives much away, rarely gives anything to Tristram. She may be the focus of his anger, but she doesn’t respond to it. She hangs back, absorbs it with almost no reaction. But in all these years, Siobhan has never come so close to Ophelia, never stood behind her the way she is right now.

So when Siobhan says, ‘It’s an earth talisman, and it’s not his. He must not have it. You must stop him from keeping it,’ Ophelia looks at Tristram and lies.

‘It’s a charm,’ she says. ‘A good luck charm. That’s all.’

Surely he’ll know. She holds his gaze for as long as she can. The lie is thick on her tongue, heavy in her mind. It’s wrong. She can’t do it. She has to tell the truth.

But Siobhan’s voice is in her ear. ‘He must not have it. Never, never,’ and Ophelia knows she’s done the right thing.

Tristram is looking hard at her. Behind her, Siobhan shifts back into the web and disappears.

‘She’s gone,’ Ophelia says to Tristram.

He sighs, leans forward and takes the talisman from her hand. She wants to hang on to it, Siobhan’s words ringing in her head, but he’ll know she lied if she does.

‘A good luck charm,’ Tristram says. He flips the disc over between his fingers. Is he convinced that that is what it is? He isn’t stupid. Ophelia doubts it’ll be that easy for him to lose interest. After all, she’s never known an object to appear during weaving before.

Her heart beats hard, her chest hurts. ‘Is that it?’ she says to Tristram, hoping he doesn’t sense anything different within her.

But he seems lost in thought, his eyes on the disc. Finally, he tucks it into his pocket, and she stands up, removes his thread from the loom. She thinks he’s done — he’s at the door, ready to leave, and she’s behind him, her mind already on whether or not there’ll be any dinner left downstairs, when he turns. His hand grabs hold of her arm, the arm with the serpent, and he tugs her in close to him.

For a moment or two his grey eyes search her face. She grimaces, but he just holds on tighter.

‘Tell no one about this,’ he says. ‘Understand?’

‘You know I won’t.’

He must know she lied. He must suspect, because his grip is so tight and his eyes are fierce. But then he lets go, and he disappears down the stairs, and she’s alone once more, her arm throbbing and her chest heavy.

She needs air. She waits until the sounds of Tristram’s feet have disappeared then hurries down the spiral stairs. She passes her second-floor bedroom — she should really change her clothes before appearing downstairs, but she can’t face it  — and continues until she’s on the ground floor, where she walks along the corridor to the door that leads outside and into the cloister.

Night has almost completely fallen, and the cloister is lit by braziers. Ophelia pauses, takes several deep breaths, letting cool air thread through her lungs. She tilts her head back to look up at her tower, behind which the first stars of the night are dissolving into view. This is where the castle ruins — the four towers, plus a few walls — join the old monastery building. Directly in front of her is where the pale grey stones of the castle bump up against the darker stones of the monastery, and she leans her hand against the familiar building, lets herself calm down.  

She still can’t believe that she lied to Tristram. It felt wrong, the lie a foreign object choking in her throat, but it also felt good. It felt good to defy him. A thrill of fear runs through her body at the thought of what he would do if he found out she lied. Siobhan had said that he mustn’t have the talisman, but what can Ophelia do about that? Steal it from him? The thought of sneaking into Tristram’s study, searching through his things, makes her shudder.

She crosses the cloister to the refectory, where candles and lamps are lit, and where a few people are still eating their evening meal. She’s about to cross the threshold when she bumps into something lying in the shadows by the door. She grabs the wall to stop herself from falling.

‘Caleb!’

A large black dog stretches across the flagstones. His tail thumps the ground at the sound of his name. Ophelia nudges him with her foot and he rolls his head to look at her from the corner of his eye.

She gives a shaky laugh. ‘You trying to kill someone?’

Caleb lifts his muzzle off the ground, sneezes, then lays down once more.

A voice reaches her. ‘I’ve told him he’s not a doormat, but he doesn’t listen.’

That voice. Sometimes she thinks it’ll kill her, that her heart can’t take the pain of him on top of the pain from weaving. But she knows the truth, and the truth is that she’d do anything to hear his voice, no matter the pain it caused.

She looks at him. He’s sitting at one of the long tables, close to the door. He’s dressed in the standard Athelyn trousers and shirt, along with high black boots and a long coat. Not one piece of clothing sits right. The shirt lies at a ragged angle across his chest, the front ties partially unlaced. The coat slips off his shoulders. A closer inspection of his boots reveals them to be caked in mud. He’s a dishevelled mess and Ophelia can’t keep the smile from her face.

Morgan smiles back. He gestures to a bowl in front of him, a bowl with a plate sitting on top to keep the contents warm.

She steps over Caleb and joins Morgan at the table. ‘You look pretty pleased with yourself,’ she says.

‘That’s all the thanks I get?’ He shakes his head. ‘Brutal.’

She shoves him in the arm and sits down, inelegantly straddling the bench seat in her dress. She takes the plate off the bowl and the rich scent of beef and mushroom soup fills her nostrils. She sighs, gives up pretending. ‘Thanks.’

She knows she’s shovelling food into her mouth in an undignified way, but she’s so hungry, and it’s just Morgan. He’s giving her an amused look, and that’s when she sees how dishevelled he really is.

‘What happened?’ Ophelia asks around a mouthful of food. ‘You’re a mess, even for you.’

Morgan’s hair is as shaggy as Caleb’s fur. The strands that fall around his chin are a darker brown than normal, and the mud that streaks his boots is in his hair, too. Ophelia puts her spoon down and raises her hand, takes a section of Morgan’s hair between her fingers. The mud is wetter than she expects, and it smears her skin. She wrinkles her nose, searches for somewhere to wipe her hand, settles on Morgan’s arm and drags her fingers across the rough fabric of his coat.

‘Do you mind?’ He makes a show of adjusting his coat, smoothing the sleeves, adopting a false air of dignity. ‘This cloak is made of the finest rags. I’d be devastated if anything happened to it.’

In response, she sticks her finger through a large hole near one of the pockets and pokes him. ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry. How rude of me.’

He grins, then bends down to pat Caleb, who has moved from the doorway to lie at their feet. Morgan runs his hand through the dog’s fur, and Caleb whines and wriggles with joy. ‘We had a little adventure, didn’t we?’

‘In a puddle?’

‘A very large puddle. More of a swamp. On the road to Combe Magna, where it dips at the bottom of the hill.’

He tells her how he’s been running errands all day, and had been forced to take Rusty, the most stubborn of Athelyn’s horses. Ophelia tends to avoid the stables — it’s not as though she ever travels off the island, so she’s never in need of a horse — but she knows of Rusty’s reputation. Unsurprisingly, Rusty had come to a halt on Morgan’s journey back to Athelyn and had refused to move.

‘My fault, of course.’ Morgan rubs Caleb’s ears. ‘Can’t trust Rusty to do anything. Caleb and I had to coax him along, and somehow we both ended up lying in the mud.’

Ophelia laughs. ‘Does your father know you were out running errands looking like this?’

‘To be fair, I’d already delivered the messages when I fell in the puddle.’ Morgan straightens, and focusses on her. ‘Speaking of my father — you’ve been with him, haven’t you?’

Her jaw tenses. ‘How can you tell?’

‘He leaves an impression.’

He doesn’t know how right he is. She can still feel Tristram’s fingers digging into her arm. And she would never tell Morgan that Tristram has left an impression on him, too. In moments like this, when Morgan’s dark eyes narrow, and his jaw clenches — when the full lips tighten, and the loose smile disappears — he is Tristram’s son.

Ophelia looks away. ‘I’ve been running errands, too.’

There’s a pause, and she wonders if he knows. She so badly wants to talk to him, not just about Tristram but about everything, all the things they used to talk about that have vanished in recent years. She wants to be tucked in next to him in one of their childhood hiding spots, telling stories, telling secrets. She knows it’s impossible, and her meal suddenly feels heavy in her stomach. She pushes her bowl away.

Then Morgan says, ‘What word describes Caleb?’

She smiles, relieved. ‘Lazy?’

‘Well, that’s a given.’ Morgan nudges Caleb with his foot. ‘You’re indolent, aren’t you?’

Ophelia rolls the word around silently in her mouth. Indolent reminds her of insouciant, both giving her the sense of relaxation, of being slack in body and mind.

‘I think he’s loafing,’ Morgan says. ‘He is, in fact, a loaf.’

She grins. ‘Like bread?’

‘Exactly like bread.’ Morgan raises his chin, sniffs the air. ‘Except bread smells far better.’

She laughs, and it lifts her up, but only for a moment. They’re both almost thirty now, and for most of the past decade she has kept things from him, things he would never forgive if he knew about them. She has never lied to Morgan, because he has no idea about Tristram and what she does for him, and so he would never know what to ask.

But he must know something. He must know that she does things for Tristram that she’s not meant to do. That she contacts Siobhan whenever Tristram wants, for whatever petty reason, just so Tristram can maintain his hold over the wraith.

Then again, if Morgan knew, if he had even the slightest suspicion about what she does with Tristram, he wouldn’t be here with her now, talking and laughing. He wouldn’t be making sure there was food left for her at the end of a long and gruelling day. If he knew the truth — that for all these years she’s been bringing Morgan’s mother back from the Otherworld against her will — he’d never speak to her again.