And what was this train ride, this meandering stumble in the dark? She recalled the odd phrase used by the stranger at her doorstep three days ago. Need-fare. A journey that must be taken.
Her thoughts ran to Ara. Of course she’s not real, Just a story.
Then she paused.
Hell, then I’ll take the story.
Cadence pulled out her sketchpad and pencils. She remembered a line from one of her instructors. Our artists’ conceit is that, ultimately, nothing is real unless it can be rendered — described, named, painted, photographed, drawn.
Well, so be it.
A muse was flitting about, ready to land on her shoulder, whispering a sketched composition with pounding horses and the waning moon that was a clock running on Ara’s fate.
She sketched for an hour and dozed and looked out the window. The countryside rolled along, telephone lines arcing from pole to pole, looping the land together like big stitches. Fields with crop rows whipped by, hypnotizing her to sleep. She awakened to the first reds and yellows of fall, flashing by in the boughs of trees. As darkness again settled in, she sped past decaying bridges thickened with vines that seemed to harbor small, leering faces beneath. For the next few miles, a gauzy, grey twilight hugged the world and was punctuated by a series of bonfires that burned merry hell in open trackside fields. They belched up smoke and flame, as if they were signals for some invading night army. To Cadence they were especially disturbing because they were wild and untended and uncontrolled.
Four years she had spent at Colorado State, pledged Tri-Delts, did the events scene, went out with football players, and never once went to the big pregame bonfires. She would get sick just thinking about it. She turned away from the window and nestled and closed her eyes to dream of more pleasant things.
She awoke to the sound of thunder and angry spanks of sheet rain punishing the train window. She looked around. It was still night. Her heart was pounding. Somewhere, somehow, the change she at once coveted and feared was coming closer. Drum beats rumbled in her mind and mixed with the noises of moving steel and wind.
She put her face to the window and cupped her hands around her eyes. She peered out into the flickering nightmare of a Class V thunderstorm. Lightning rippled across the sky and gave substance to the silvery veils of rain. Passing pools of water glinted in the flashes and watched her like the eyes of passing strangers. Then, as a core of ragged bolts created a kind of flickering openness to all the unpeopled night, she passed a country crossroads where five cloaked horsemen circled inward in council, their mounts pluming nostril smoke and strange blue light. One rose in the stirrups and pointed a finger at her, his outstretched arm moving, keeping dead aim on her as she sped past.
Then, as if it never existed, the scene passed.
She abruptly pushed back from the window. Just black glass now, complete with smeary hand and nose smudges on it. She stared at her reflection.
There would be no more sleep this night.
The train outraced the storm, streaking toward a new dawn of breaking purple and yellow light. After awhile, she heard the clink of rails followed by a highball wail mimicking those tones of sadness and regret. “ You know the sounds?” the man had asked. Now she knew.
She listened and heard a wheel-click, suddenly tripping into that rare short-rail click-clack, click-clack for a minute or two.
She was approaching something that had been kept from her. Maybe it was just some factoid about the Tolkien documents; maybe it was another puzzle-piece about Ara. She hoped it was some truth about her family. Not magic, not a fairy tale. Just gimme truth, she prayed.
Chapter 8
THE POOL
The water here, like the light that seeped down to this deep, sub-street level, was a thin, greasy gray. Both found their way through the street grates to fall into the hairline cracks in the concrete. The resonant drip-blip, drip-blip had resumed its endless, lonely cadence.
Across the littered concrete floor pooled a great splatter of water, as if something bulky had heaved forth from hidden depths.
A darker shadow hovered now in the corner. So very still, but alert to its strange new surroundings.
This thing warped into the shape of a man, whose very breath was the moan of windswept crags, whose walk was the grass-rustle of treacherous heaths, whose voice was the crack of bones. This thing — this man named Barren — had come for Cadence.
The name New York City meant nothing to him, but he would learn. Fast. That was his talent.
BOOK II
“O see ye not yon narrow road
So thick beset wi’ thorns and briers?”
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
The book sits still, waiting for my eye to glance away. There! Did it not shift ever so slightly? Does something sprout along its spine? A ripple runs now beneath the cobbled skin of its cover. Words have power. I dread it, but soon, in the day, I will pick up this tattered volume. I will read and another world will exist.
Chapter 9
INKLINGS III
The discussions this Tuesday evening wandered from academic standards to gardening, and then faltered altogether, until the following exchange:
“Well, not to jump into politics this late, but what about the story in today’s Guardian?”
“Today’s what?”
The sound of a folded newspaper being opened and scuffled to fullness.
“Here, Ian, you troglodyte. Today, July 16, 1962, page one, ‘Government Unveils Cambridge Five As Spies. Great Damage Done’. It gets worse. ‘Kim Philby, a graduate of Cambridge’s Trinity College, revealed as double agent for Soviets.’”
“At least not an Oxford man.”
“Don’t be too proud, Clive, there are foxes in every henhouse.”
“My God, what’s happened to Queen and Country, and all that?”
“Tollers, you’re quiet. Why the down face? Jack, you tell us.”
“Well, as his friend, I know some of this, but its up to him.”
“Eh, Tollers?”
“Come along, we are your fellows here.”
“I worked with him.”
“Who?”
“Kim Philby.”
A long, questioning silence.
“All right, now that you’ve wilted the spinach, tell us. Enough of myths and old men’s tales for tonight. Come on.”
“Very well. Hardly Top Secret anymore, I suppose. Much of it is already declassified. Here it is — just before the last war, I was briefly an agent for the government, for her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
“You rascal! Another of your secret gates, Tollers.”
“As you know, I published The Hobbit in 1937. I had what I thought was a modest reputation for scholarly work with languages. I was recruited by S.I.S., as part of their code-breaking effort. I was assigned to Bletchley Park, the cypher school. Alan Turin, who finally broke the Enigma Code, was there. Hitler’s agents were scouring the world in search of a ‘living cipher’—an organic language that changes its apparent meanings on its own and is thus immune to code-breaking. He was understandably concerned with his security, and so wanted an impenetrable code to be used by his personal cadre of bodyguards.”