Tom stared into the fire, said nothing.
"If you don't want to talk about it-"
"I don't think I'm quite human any more."
"Don't think?" Veitch watched Tom's face in the firelight, wondering why it was always so hard to tell what he was thinking or feeling.
"I don't know. I don't know if I should be here with people, or back in Otherworld with the rest of the strange things. I don't know if I can trust my feelings, if I really have any feelings, or if I just pretend to myself I have feelings. I don't know if I cut myself open if I'll find straw inside, or diamonds, or fishes, or if all the component parts are there, just in the wrong order." He continued to watch the flames.
Veitch had a sudden, sweeping awareness of Tom's tragedy. He had lost everything; not just his family and friends, who were separated from him by centuries, but his kinship with humanity, his sense of who or what he was. He was more alone than anyone ever could be. Yet he still wished and hoped and felt and yearned; and he still tried to do his best for everyone, despite his own suffering.
"I think you're just a bloke, like me and the others," Veitch said.
Tom looked at him curiously.
"And I think you'll find what you're looking for."
Tom returned his attention to the fire. "Thank you for that."
"It must be hard to go back to that bitch who wrecked your life."
Tom remained silent, but Witch noticed the faint tremor of a nerve near his mouth.
"You know when I said I couldn't understand why everybody thought you were a hero. I'm sorry about that."
Tom threw some more wood on the fire and it crackled like gunfire. "We need to get some sleep."
"Okay, I'll take first watch." He stood up and stretched, breathing deeply of the night air. "What are we going to find when we get where we're going?"
"Everything we ever dreamed of." Tom wandered towards the tent. "And everything we ever feared."
Tom had been in the tent barely five minutes when an awful sound echoed between the steep walls of the gorge. All the hairs on the back of Veitch's neck stood erect instantly and a queasy sensation burrowed deep in the pit of his stomach. Veitch hoped it was just an unusual effect of the wind rushing down from the mountains, but then Tom came scrambling out of the tent, his face unnaturally pale, and Veitch knew his first instincts were correct: it was the crying of a woman burdened by an unbearable grief.
At first he wondered if it was Anna, who had followed them, but Tom caught at his sleeve as he made to investigate. "Don't. You won't find anyone."
"What do you mean?" Veitch felt strangely cold; his left hand was trembling.
"You can always hear the Caoineag's lament, but you will never see her."
Veitch peered into the dark. The wailing set his teeth on edge, dragged out a wave of despair from deep within him. He wanted to crawl into the tent and never come out again. "What is it?"
"She is one of the sisters of the Washer at the Ford." Tom's voice was so low Veitch could barely hear it. "A grim spirit."
"Is this her place, up here in the mountains?"
Tom shook his head. "She is here for us."
"For us?" Veitch dreaded what Tom was to say next.
"Those who hear the sound of the Caoineag's mourning are doomed to face death or great sorrow." And with that he turned and dismally retreated to the tent.
Chapter Sixteen
The light from the fire glowed through the trees like a beacon in the darkness of the night. Another technology failure had left Shavi breathless as the sea of illumination that spread out across the Midlands winked out in an instant; even after all this time it still chilled him deeply to see it.
He had just been coming down the final, gentle slopes of the Pennines after Ashbourne when it happened. He never travelled at night, particularly in the wild country, but he wanted to complete the last leg of that difficult part of the journey before he reached the more comforting built-up areas that lay towards the south. Now he wondered if he had made the wrong decision.
More than anything, he was aware of time running away from him; Lughnasadh was only eleven days away, little enough time to put everything right. He still found it hard to believe their great victory in Edinburgh had turned to such a potentially huge failure. His mind kept flashing back to Ruth and the suffering she must be feeling. But more, he was aware of the looming presence of Balor, in the shadows beneath the trees, or the chill in the wind, or the deep dark of a cloudy night. There had been no sign of the Fomorii, but he knew they were out there, searching for him. He could palpably sense the god of death and evil close to their reality. He felt it like a queasiness in the pit of his stomach and in the many dreams that had increasingly afflicted his sleep. An overpowering atmosphere of dread was beginning to fall over everything he saw and heard.
Although the night was warm and there were plenty of stars, a smattering of clouds kept obscuring the moon. That made the darkness almost impenetrable and he was sure he could hear something moving nearby. On several occasions he had been convinced someone was following; not too close, but tracking him from afar, sometimes off to one side, sometimes the other, always out of sight. He tried to pretend it was paranoia, but he had learned to trust his sharpened senses.
His main comfort was that if it were some kind of stalking beast, it had had plenty of opportunity to attack him while he slept. Yet it kept its distance, almost as if it were sizing him up. A twig snapped, too loud in the still of the night. He looked round briefly, then hurried towards the fire.
Almost forty people were seated around a blazing campfire next to a copse on the edge of a field. In the gloom beyond were parked a motley collection of vehicles: a black, single-decker bus of fifties vintage, a beat-up Luton van spray-painted in Day-Glo colours, other coaches, obsolete and heavily modified, minibuses stocked high with effects. The gathered crowd were obviously travellers, camouflaged by old army fatigues, leather and denim, hair long, spikey or shorn, piercings glinting everywhere, tattoos glowing darkly in the flickering light. They were all ages: children playing on the edge of the firelight, a few babes in arms, several pensioners, and a good selection of those in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. The hubbub of conversation that drowned out the cracking, spitting wood dried up the moment Shavi stepped into the circle of light.
Shavi scanned their faces, expecting the suspicion and anger that came when a tight-knit group was disrupted, but there was nothing. He looked for anyone who might be a leader or spokesman.
A thickset man with long black hair and a bushy beard waved Shavi over with a lazy motion of an arm as thick as Shavi's thigh. He wore a cut-off denim jacket over a bare chest and had a gold band straining around his tattooed bicep; a matching gold gypsy earring shone amidst the black curls. He was grinning broadly; one of his front teeth was chipped.
"The last brave man of England!" His voice had the rich, deep resonance of a drum. "Come over here and tell us what it takes to walk alone in the countryside at night!"
Shavi squatted down next to him, perfectly balanced with the tips of his fingers on the ground. "I did not intend to be out so late-"
The man's bellowed laugh cut Shavi short. "Now how many times have we heard that before?"
The others laughed in response, but it wasn't directed at Shavi. "Come on, pull up a pew." The man slapped the dry ground next to him. "You don't want to be going back out there in a hurry, do you?"
Shavi accepted his hospitality with a smile. The easy conversation resumed immediately, as if he were an old friend who had just returned to the fold. A second later a cup of warm cider was pressed into his hands. He could smell hash on the wind and soon someone switched on an eighties beat-box. It pumped out music which seemed to switch without rhyme or reason from upbeat to ambient, jungle to folk. There was a strange, relaxed mood that was oddly timeless. He felt quite at home.