Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night Read online

  "What is it?" Nat asks, jumping off the footstool.

  Layla holds it out to show him. She expected a letter, but instead it's a yellowing sheet of newsprint, cut from a local paper. With a pang in her heart, Layla recognises the three people in the blurred image: a child with his face half hidden from the camera, with a man and a woman on either side of him. All three of them look shell-shocked.

  "Is that…" Nat says, trailing off. "That's Meraud, isn't it. When they came back."

  "Yeah," Layla says. "I think it means we have to go back."

  On some level, she knew this all along. Meraud, a gift of the water, back where it all began.

  Nat's looking at her with a strange, sad expression. For him, it isn't going back: he wasn't there the first time. Layla takes his hand by instinct, and it seems to help.

  ___

  The journey across is quiet. The Mixed Pond remains open to winter swimmers, even when the trees are frosted and the eastern sky is struggling towards light. Some of them are gathered at the far edge, their bodies thin and pale. Strangely, they're not concerned at the alien presence of a wooden rowboat, tiny, with short, squat oars. Layla wonders if this reverent hush is a sign; if it means that they will make it to the other place.

  Nat brought a thermos flask of coffee, which Layla finds endearing. He had it on him last night at Meraud's flat and they got it refilled at Starbucks at six o'clock this morning. Other than the coffee, they have only the snowglobe, the clothes they're standing up in, and the red fabric scrap at the prow, taken from a pile of magical supplies in Meraud's living room. Nothing electronic, so no phones. The red might be superstition, or it might be necessary. Layla isn't sure. She thinks Meraud might have told her that. He might also have told her how many people successfully cross over by doing this, but she can't remember. It might be four in ten, or four in a hundred. Thinking about Meraud now makes her nerves jangle: partly with fear for his life and partly in anticipation of loss.

  They reach the halfway point, as far out in open water as they're going to get. Nat pauses rowing to give her a small, understanding smile. He's here with her on this seemingly mundane trip across a north London bathing pond, and he's here with her for whatever thing of moment lies beneath. It's comforting, a weight and tether. Layla takes a sip of Nat's coffee. At last, they come to the bank and tie the boat up.

  "Is this it?" Nat asks, whispering by instinct, but Layla doesn't know. It's just a mossy bank alongside stagnant water. There are clumps of rushes, trees with soaked branches, thorns reaching from the undergrowth. It could be any winter morning, in any place.

  Although – Layla leans out over the surface of the pond – the swimmers are gone. That doesn't mean anything in itself. They might have retired for fluffy towels and hot chocolate. Four in ten, or four in a hundred, whichever it is, means they might not even have reached the other place.

  But still: it's so quiet.

  "I guess so," she says.

  "I don't even know what we're looking for," Nat says, kicking a pebble.

  Layla is seized with unreasonable panic for a second – who knows what rules there might be here, about disturbing what you find – but she's also grateful for the small skitter of sound. She's grateful for Nat's presence.

  "Are you sure he meant us to actually come here?" he asks.

  "I don't know," Layla says.

  Nat has the newspaper cutting out of his pocket. Brave family's stunning return from fairyland, the headline says, in the effusive tones of local news, but the article is mostly just quotes from the early-morning dog walkers who found them. Beyond telling them it was the Mixed Pond, it wasn't helpful. The only people who know the truth of how this place came to be a site of returning are Meraud and his parents. And, in truth, perhaps only Meraud, for whom it was not a returning at all.

  Layla reaches in her own pocket for the snowglobe. Not because she has any particular idea of what to do with it, but it's another of the few items they were able to bring with them and must be worth something for that. It looks no different from how it looked on the other side of the water.

  Although – Layla looks up, down at her feet, over the water and back again. "Nat," she says, startled into ordinary volume. "Does this look… familiar to you?"

  It's a passing impression she's trying to convey to him, before it passes. Like the moment by the lighthouse at North Foreland, when she knew something was about to come into focus. She shakes the snowglobe and holds it out to him, and wishes that it did have glitter in it. That Amy were here. She always has glitter.

  "Yeah, I see it," Nat says, taking it from her and holding it up. "That's it over there, right?"

  He's pointing a short distance along the bank at a deciduous tree with bare branches. Its roots are cloaked with moss and liverwort and it has the scars of parasitic mistletoe on its bore. "Yeah," Layla says. "Maybe? I don't know."

  She's not sure, but she thinks so: this particular tree on this particular bank is the full-sized version of the one in the snowglobe. And it would make sense if it were; this whole journey has been reflections in strange mirrors. Meraud's life, seen in the relief of what he left behind; a view by a lighthouse mirrored by a photograph that was another thing Meraud left behind. Not to mention her own recent self-reflection, Layla thinks wryly. As usual, Katrina was right.

  Layla pulls herself together and goes over to investigate the tree more closely, while Nat kicks his way into the undergrowth behind it. There's a primordial air to the bracken and brambles; nothing here has ever been cut back or pruned.

  But the tree is just a tree, with more sticky moss at its roots and sodden bark unpleasant to touch.

  "Is this it?" Layla asks, aware of the building layers of uncertainty. They don't know if this is the other place; if it is, if this is the place in the snowglobe; or if any of this is right at all, if the cutting in the photograph meant them to come here and what they should be looking for now they have.

  "This is it," Nat says, just out of sight. He sounds strange, choked with something. Layla steps through the morass of roots.

  Nat is kneeling in the undergrowth beside Meraud's body. As Layla watches, he pulls Meraud to him, trying to shift the tangle of leaves, thorns and holly. Layla is thinking only of what she sees every day, surrounded by the magic that stays corruption: the quiet and unresisting forms of the dead.

  Part 2

  This is a terrible idea. Not Meraud levels of terrible, no one's in more mortal danger than they were this morning, but pretty terrible all the same. Nat would rate it at maybe a quarter of a Meraud's worth of bad decision making. He pushes down the panic that's been threatening to bubble up ever since they found Meraud's not-dead body and their next not-helpful clue, and forces himself to smile.

  "So what made you choose St Tommy's?" the Reverend Please-Call-Me-Judy-Everyone-Does Walker asks them. She's a cheerful oblong of a woman, built like she could be a flanker on God's rugby team, and so far she's patted Nat's hand once and Layla's hand three times. He's not into it. "Did one of you used to attend here, or…?"

  She tails off hopefully.

  "I just, I've always thought it's not a proper wedding if it's not in a church," Layla says, clutching at Nat's elbow for emphasis.

  "And St Thomas's is so beautiful," Nat adds gamely. Gamely-ish. He's not nearly as good at this as Layla, which turns out to grate. He makes a gesture that takes in everything from the pews to the stained-glass windows. Somewhere in here is something very beautiful indeed, if the infuriatingly vague note they found with Meraud is to be believed. "When we saw it, we just thought—"

  "Yes," Layla says. "We just thought, yes."

  They all smile at each other. Nat sees his own slightly manic fake cheer reflected in Layla's eyes. Three days ago they were lifting Meraud's not-dead body into a wooden rowboat, and now they're in the main hall of the Church of St Thomas and All Saints, lying to a vicar who's brought them here to "just show you lovebirds a little of what makes our St Tommy's so special"
.

  "Do you live in the parish?" Rev Walker prompts, before the silence can go from friendly to strained. She must have a lot of practice at this.

  Well, hopefully not exactly this.

  Meraud isn't dead, is what Nat's clinging to. The tree isn't bare yet, and Layla examined the body. She said – in that brisk, slightly too confident tone Nat's beginning to recognise means she's scared – she's seen this before, a couple of years into her speciality training. A magically suspended body, neither alive nor dead. Not currently in use, she said. He didn't ask if she was quoting someone.

  Meraud – Meraud's body – had a note clutched tightly in one hand. A drawing of a sprig of holly, the address of the church, and a smiley face.

  Even if the note hadn't been in both Meraud's hand and his handwriting, they would have known it was from him. No one else could manage to be so annoying in so few pen strokes.

  "We're not sure." Here and now, Layla answers Rev Walker's question about their parish like a woman who's never had a pitched battle with the Church of England website's interactive mapping portal to solve exactly this problem.

  Again, maybe not exactly this problem. Nat's initial suggestion was that they visit during opening hours. Attend a service, maybe. But they'd stick out like – well, like a Hindu and a blue-haired Jew. They need legitimacy.

  Which means marriage. Nat's eyes hurt from rolling.

  As they discussed, Layla gives the vicar Meraud's address. "Do you think, are we in the right place?"

  Rev Walker assures them Meraud's flat is well within the parish boundaries. "Which all makes it so much simpler," she says, "not that I wouldn't have been delighted to marry you wherever you lived, but it's a bit of a faff, you know, much better this way."

  She beams at them, her entire face expressing nothing but pure joy at the already-gay-married Hindu and fuck-marriage-and-the-horse-it-rode-in-on Jew who've bluffed their way into her life. She explains what a series of helpful and friendly webpages had already told them: anyone can get married in a Church of England church, but it's necessarily a religious wedding, and "some people find it a wonderful time to think about returning to the church, if it's been a part of their life before—?"

  Another of those hopeful tail-offs. The "anyone" is Rev Walker's phrasing. She doesn't mention the bit on the helpful and friendly web pages about how same-sex couples can't get married in their churches.

  ("Why are you annoyed by that?" Layla asked Nat when he read it out to her last night. "Surely marriage is heteronormative conformist bullshit that distracts from real queer rights issues?" She wasn't wrong, though he didn't and doesn't appreciate her tone. It was still annoying. Just because he doesn't want anything to do with this crap doesn't mean they get to not let him—and that's the point where if Meraud were around, he would say something dryly funny to puncture Nat's bad mood. But he's not around, is he, and that's the whole fucking problem.)

  Layla takes the lead on this one, thankfully. "I think we both"—she looks up at Nat adoringly; she's unnervingly good at that—"we've always felt like we never stopped being Christian, you know? We just drifted away from it."

  "Layla's always wanted to get married in a church," Nat continues for her, "and when we stopped to think about why, we realised how meaningful it was. To both of us."

  Rev Walker is nodding approvingly.

  Layla gasps as if she's just had the most wonderful idea. "You've got such a beautiful ceiling." She gestures up at the exposed wooden beams. "Do you think we could make it part of the ceremony? Can you imagine it, sweetie, me and my bridesmaids starting up on the gallery, walking down to join you? Or is that too much? Maybe we could decorate it? We could string lights across, like a beautiful fairy wonderland."

  "Wow," Nat says honestly. Then, modifying his tone, "You'd look so beautiful." He turns to Rev Walker. "Could we see up there? Even just to get a view of the church from that angle – I think it would really help us imagine our special day."

  It would help them see into the nooks and crannies, or just to see if there are any nooks and crannies: the building is a water-worn study in grim Protestantism, without your fancy crypts and apses and whatnot. Nat pored over the floorplan online and was none the wiser, so if Layla actually has a sensible idea, he's willing to go along with it. Better than his considered alternative of screaming into the carpet.

  It looks like it genuinely pains Rev Walker to say no, but she does it anyway, because nothing on this ridiculous scavenger hunt can ever be simple. The church roof was last renovated about fifteen years ago, and given the age of the building, they had to do it to slightly lower specifications than they wanted to. It's not unsafe exactly but no one has been allowed up there since then, a rule she can't break "even for such a lovely couple as yourselves".

  There goes that bright idea.

  Layla pouts, Nat nods responsibly, and between the two of them they manage to convey that they're disappointed, but of course the most important thing about their special day is their love for each other, not some silly ceiling, haha, let's forget all about that.

  "Going back to what you were saying before," Nat says, hoping the vicar reads this as 'before you shattered my fiancée's dreams' rather than 'before we got weird about your roof', "we were actually wondering if you had evening classes or something? Like you say, this is a perfect time to start thinking about our relationship with God again, as we start this, uh—" He stumbles for a moment, lands on: "New chapter of our lives together?"

  The vicar gives them both another indulgent smile. She chuckles – honestly chuckles, a sound Nat isn't sure he's ever heard outside of 1970s radio dramas – and pats both of them on the hand again. He's still not into it. "It's okay, you don't have to pretend you're not already living together! This dog collar doesn't cut me off from the world completely."

  They both laugh in response. Layla's is a gentle tinkle that sounds like the aural equivalent of a PTA bring-and-buy sale. Nat is honest enough to recognise the likeness of his own to a dying cat.

  "That's wonderful, that's really wonderful." And with that, Rev Walker's unfeigned joy pushes this up to at least half of a Meraud's worth of a bad idea. Great. He doesn't like her, but apparently he can still feel guilty about misleading her. Thanks, Judaism, always great to have your guilt complex along for the ride.

  She briskly walks them through next steps – invites them to a service this coming Sunday "just to see what we get up to here" and notes down their email addresses to send them the relevant paperwork. "I'm sure you've got plenty of other wonderful venues in mind," she tells them, "so I don't want you to feel pressured. Of course, we'd love to see you again even if you end up choosing somewhere else for your special day."

  She even walks them out afterwards, waves them off from the door to the church. He's not sure where she imagines they're going next – to pick out curtains, maybe, or on a double date with another adorably cishet couple where the men will talk football while the women roll their eyes fondly. Compared to that, it's almost a relief to be heading to the home his fake fiancée shares with her wife and two daughters.

  ___

  Layla sits Nat at the kitchen table while she sorts the kids out. When she gets back, he's eyeing one of Jae's beakers with the polite bemusement of someone who's never had to compromise with a three-year-old. Jae likes to put things in water to see what happens; it's better to let her do it somewhere you can keep an eye on it than deal with the (surprisingly well-hidden) results when they start to smell.

  Currently, the plastic beakers contain, from left to right: an egg; a cube of brie; a gobstopper that's dyed the water neon pink; and a tampon. She has to give Jae credit where it's due – turns out, it is really satisfying to put a tampon in water and see what happens.

  "Curious young minds," Layla says by way of explanation. "Tea?"

  Amy and Jae are watching CBeebies in the living room, the doors open between there and the kitchen in case they start squabbling loud enough to require parental interv
ention. It's weird to have Nat here, but needs must – and after their return over the water with Meraud's body, it's kind of a relief to have him here, to include him in a part of her life that isn't not-dead bodies and lying to vicars.

  "It's a terrible idea," Nat says, and it takes Layla a second to realise he doesn't mean the tampons. "Layla, really. It was all very well, pretending to be married—"

  "Affianced."

  "Whatever." Nat looks over his shoulder at the kids and visibly decides not to swear. "It was fine, saying, oh, we want to get married here so please show us around, but what now? We actually do the classes?"

  "We have to," Layla says. "We need the excuse to spend a lot of time in there. If we can't search properly—"

  "Even if we can, it could be anywhere," Nat interrupts. "Literally anywhere. God, Meraud, why are you like this?"

  A few days ago, he'd have said that with fond exasperation, a little humour. He's sounding pretty humourless right now. Layla tries to shake off the settling dread. "There's also Aelthel," she says.

  "What even is that?" Nat says, which is a good question. "Aelthel" – be it person, place or thing – is a single word on the other side of the paper with the holly clue. Neither of them has the slightest idea what it means, though Layla can't shake the notion that it's familiar. They've both gone online to find out, of course, and found nothing save Anglo-Saxon historian academics having Twitter spats.

  Nat even asked a bunch of magicians who hang out on Reddit, carefully vague, both of them watching the snowglobe in case this counted as help. He got back less than they'd already found by googling, plus someone insulting his username, two people using his post's comments to have an unrelated row about cabbages, and one very earnest attempt to sell him Bitcoin. If there were any justice in the world, this level of unhelpfulness would have put a couple of leaves back on the damned tree.