“No, I want them,” I said. “Can I, Will? Please?” The return of the chicks – and their metamorphosis – struck me as the best of good omens. I wanted the quacks for that, and for the fact that they had acknowledged me their friend. And if they were not an omen – well, I wanted them anyway. They were beautiful.
“Well, they’re not an Earth species,” Will said dubiously. “Still, you’ve got a breeding pair there. And they seem to like you. Why not?” He looked out into the dark land. “No sign of anything else out there?”
“No,” I said.
He surveyed me, and the remaining candles. “Get some sleep,” he said. “You look whacked. And you’ve still got nearly six hours’ worth of candles there. Or you should have. You’ve been letting them burn too high.”
I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to say I had superstitiously let the flames burn higher in hopes that this might help whatever went on out there. I didn’t want anything. I felt sick with anxiety and lack of sleep.
“Go on,” said Will. “I’ll watch.”
Reluctantly, I left the chair and took Will’s warm place in the bed. The quacks, to my pleasure, followed me and roosted on the duvet.
“That’s better,” said Will. “Mind if I use the last packet of tea?”
That was the last I heard for a while.
When I woke up, it was getting light outside. Will had left the curtains drawn, the better to see the road and the landscape. The room looked squalid and very strange, with bars of one kind of light coming round the curtains, two minute glimmers on the ends of the seventh pair of candles, and the grey, nebulous luminosity of the stony path, now reaching more than two-thirds of the way to the door. Light of day showed the landscape no less dark, but weirdly skewed, floating at an angle to the room. The quacks were asleep, each with its head tucked under its wing.
“I woke you because I think I saw something out there,” Will said tensely. He was leaning forward, staring.
I got up quickly and scrambled round beside him. The landscape looked straighter and more real from here. But I couldn’t see anything living out there.
“There,” said Will, pointing so that I could sight along his arm. “Coming down the hill.”
There was a glimmer. By God, there was a glimmer, steadily moving this way! I watched it crawl round a loop of the road, and then pelted to the bathroom, then to the kettle, where I discovered Will had drunk the last packet of coffee too. I could hardly grudge it him. When I got back to the frilly chair, the glimmer was out of sight.
“Coming pretty steadily,” Will said. “Shouldn’t be long now.”
We waited. Five minutes became ten. Became fifteen. Finally we began to hear the slow scuff of footsteps coming up the hill. I had to hang on to Will’s shoulder, or I would have run between the candles and peered over the hillcrest. Another minute passed, and panting breath could be heard above the footsteps, and the roll of stones. At length a dark head topped the rise. Surged into a tall body. And became Nick, grey-white with exhaustion, moving at a loping trudge between the burnt-out candles. He was looking at the burning stub of his candle and so intent on that and on his journey that he did not at first realise he had finished it. He looked bewildered when we both bellowed, “Nick!”
I looked at the empty hillcrest behind him. I could hear no more footsteps. “Nick,” I said. “What happened?”
Nick’s shoulders slumped. “Can I blow this out now?” he asked, raising his candle stump.
“Come on out by the chair first,” Will said. “That’s it. Want to sit? No? OK.” He shepherded Ni
ck quickly into the space by the bed, shooting a look at me to convey that Nick was out on his feet. “Now. What happened?” he asked very gently.
I don’t think I could have said or done anything. I was too desolated.
“We got there,” Nick said. “Maree and I did. We lost Rob. The last bit, that was. I don’t know what happened, not to Rob. Oh, and before that we met your friend, Rupert. The one Maree thinks is fabulous and Nordic. He said to tell you where he’d gone.”
Nick ran down here and stood staring at the carpet. Will said, “And?”
“We got there,” Nick repeated. Then, with a sudden access of energy, he added, “And you’ll never guess what Maree went and did! When we were at – at the – at the right place anyway – and you were supposed to ask for just one thing. I couldn’t believe it! She went and asked for her dad to be cured of his cancer!”
I couldn’t look at Will, though I know he was staring at me. “So what happened then?” I managed to say.
“What? Oh, I had to ask for her, of course,” Nick said, rather irritably. “I had to use mine up and now I’ll never be—” He shut his mouth resolutely on whatever ambition that had been and, I suspected, on the tears that went with it. “I asked just like you told us,” he said. “Every word, carefully.”
“Well done,” said Will. “Didn’t it work then?”
Nick seemed surprised. “Yes, of course it worked.”
“Where is Maree then?” I dared to ask.
Nick hunched his shoulders. “How should I know? Isn’t she coming?”